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"Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate,
Who ne'er the mournful, midnight hours
Weeping upon his bed has sate,
He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers."
In John Lyly's Endymion, Sir Topas is made to say; "Dost thou know what a Poet is? Why, fool, a Poet is as much as one should say,—a Poet!" And thou, reader, dost thou know what a hero is? Why, a hero is as much as one should say,—a hero! Some romance-writers, however, say much more than this. Nay, the old Lombard, Matteo Maria Bojardo, set all the church-bells in Scandiano ringing, merely because he had found a name for one of his heroes. Here, also, shall church-bells be rung, but more solemnly.
The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone.Shadows of evening fall around us, and the world seems but a dim reflection,—itself a broader shadow. We look forward into the coming, lonely night. The soul withdraws into itself. Then stars arise, and the night is holy.
Paul Flemming had experienced this, though still young. The friend of his youth was dead. The bough had broken "under the burden of the unripe fruit." And when, after a season, he looked up again from the blindness of his sorrow, all things seemed unreal. Like the man, whose sight had been restored by miracle, he beheld men, as trees, walking. His household gods were broken. He had no home. His sympathies cried aloud from his desolate soul, and there came no answer from the busy, turbulent world around him. He did not willingly give way to grief. He struggled to be cheerful,—to be strong. But he could no longer look into the familiar faces of his friends. He could no longer live alone, where he had lived with her. He went abroad, that the sea might be between him and the grave. Alas! betweenhim and his sorrow there could be no sea, but that of time.
He had already passed many months in lonely wandering, and was now pursuing his way along the Rhine, to the south of Germany. He had journeyed the same way before, in brighter days and a brighter season of the year, in the May of life and in the month of May. He knew the beauteous river all by heart;—every rock and ruin, every echo, every legend. The ancient castles, grim and hoar, that had taken root as it were on the cliffs,—they were all his; for his thoughts dwelt in them, and the wind told him tales.
He had passed a sleepless night at Rolandseck, and had risen before daybreak. He opened the window of the balcony to hear the rushing of the Rhine. It was a damp December morning; and clouds were passing over the sky,—thin, vapory clouds, whose snow-white skirts were "often spotted with golden tears, which men call stars." The day dawned slowly; and, in the mingling of daylightand starlight, the island and cloister of Nonnenwerth made together but one broad, dark shadow on the silver breast of the river. Beyond, rose the summits of the Siebengebirg. Solemn and dark, like a monk, stood the Drachenfels, in his hood of mist, and rearward extended the Curtain of Mountains, back to the Wolkenburg,—the Castle of the Clouds.
But Flemming thought not of the scene before him. Sorrow unspeakable was upon his spirit in that lonely hour; and, hiding his face in his hands, he exclaimed aloud;
"Spirit of the past! look not so mournfully at me with thy great, tearful eyes! Touch me not with thy cold hand! Breathe not upon me with the icy breath of the grave! Chant no more that dirge of sorrow, through the long and silent watches of the night!"
Mournful voices from afar seemed to answer, "Treuenfels!" and he remembered how others had suffered, and his heart grew still.
Slowly the landscape brightened. Down therushing stream came a boat, with its white wings spread, and darted like a swallow through the narrow pass of God's-Help. The boatmen were singing, but not the song of Roland the Brave, which was heard of old by the weeping Hildegund, as she sat within the walls of that cloister, which now looked forth in the pale morning from amid the leafless linden trees. The dim traditions of those gray old times rose in the traveller's memory; for the ruined tower of Rolandseck was still looking down upon the Kloster Nonnenwerth, as if the sound of the funeral bell had changed the faithful Paladin to stone, and he were watching still to see the form of his beloved one come forth, not from her cloister, but from her grave. Thus the brazen clasps of the book of legends were opened, and, on the page illuminated by the misty rays of the rising sun, he read again the tales of Liba, and the mournful bride of Argenfels, and Siegfried, the mighty slayer of the dragon. Meanwhile the mists had risen from the Rhine, and the whole air was filled with golden vapor, through which hebeheld the sun, hanging in heaven like a drop of blood. Even thus shone the sun within him, amid the wintry vapors, uprising from the valley of the shadow of death, through which flowed the stream of his life,—sighing, sighing!
Paul Flemming resumed his solitary journey. The morning was still misty, but not cold. Across the Rhine the sun came wading through the reddish vapors; and soft and silver-white outspread the broad river, without a ripple upon its surface, or visible motion of the ever-moving current. A little vessel, with one loose sail, was riding at anchor, keel to keel with another, that lay right under it, its own apparition,—and all was silent, and calm, and beautiful.
The road was for the most part solitary; for there are few travellers upon the Rhine in winter. Peasant women were at work in the vineyards; climbing up the slippery hill-sides, like beasts of burden, with large baskets of manureupon their backs. And once during the morning, a band of apprentices, with knapsacks, passed by, singing, "The Rhine! The Rhine! a blessing on the Rhine!"
O, the pride of the German heart in this noble river! And right it is; for, of all the rivers of this beautiful earth, there is none so beautiful as this. There is hardly a league of its whole course, from its cradle in the snowy Alps to its grave in the sands of Holland, which boasts not its peculiar charms. By heavens! If I were a German I would be proud of it too; and of the clustering grapes, that hang about its temples, as it reels onward through vineyards, in a triumphal march, like Bacchus, crowned and drunken.
But I will not attempt to describe the Rhine; it would make this chapter much too long. And to do it well, one should write like a god; and his style flow onward royally with breaks and dashes, like the waters of that royal river, and antique, quaint, and Gothic times, be reflected in it. Alas! this evening my style flows not at all. Flow,then, into this smoke-colored goblet, thou blood of the Rhine! out of thy prison-house,—out of thy long-necked, tapering flask, in shape not unlike a church-spire among thy native hills; and, from the crystal belfry, loud ring the merry tinkling bells, while I drink a health to my hero, in whose heart is sadness, and in whose ears the bells of Andernach are ringing noon.
He is threading his way alone through a narrow alley, and now up a flight of stone steps, and along the city wall, towards that old round tower, built by the Archbishop Frederick of Cologne in the twelfth century. It has a romantic interest in his eyes; for he has still in his mind and heart that beautiful sketch of Carové, in which is described a day on the tower of Andernach. He finds the old keeper and his wife still there; and the old keeper closes the door behind him slowly, as of old, lest he should jam too hard the poor souls in Purgatory, whose fate it is to suffer in the cracks of doors and hinges. But alas! alas! the daughter, the maiden with long, dark eyelashes!she is asleep in her little grave, under the linden trees of Feldkirche, with rosemary in her folded hands!
Flemming returned to the hotel disappointed. As he passed along the narrow streets, he was dreaming of many things; but mostly of the keeper's daughter, asleep in the churchyard of Feldkirche. Suddenly, on turning the corner of an ancient, gloomy church, his attention was arrested by a little chapel in an angle of the wall. It was only a small thatched roof, like a bird's nest; under which stood a rude wooden image of the Saviour on the Cross. A real crown of thorns was upon his head, which was bowed downward, as if in the death agony; and drops of blood were falling down his cheeks, and from his hands and feet and side. The face was haggard and ghastly beyond all expression; and wore a look of unutterable bodily anguish. The rude sculptor had given it this, but his art could go no farther. The sublimity of death in a dying Saviour, the expiring God-likeness of Jesus of Nazareth was not there.The artist had caught no heavenly inspiration from his theme. All was coarse, harsh, and revolting to a sensitive mind; and Flemming turned away with a shudder, as he saw this fearful image gazing at him, with its fixed and half-shut eyes.
He soon reached the hotel, but that face of agony still haunted him. He could not refrain from speaking of it to a very old woman, who sat knitting by the window of the dining-room, in a high-backed, old-fashioned arm-chair. I believe she was the innkeeper's grandmother. At all events she was old enough to be so. She took off her owl-eyed spectacles, and, as she wiped the glasses with her handkerchief, said;
"Thou dear Heaven! Is it possible! Did you never hear of the Christ of Andernach?"
Flemming answered in the negative.
"Thou dear Heaven!" continued the old woman. "It is a very wonderful story; and a true one, as every good Christian in Andernach will tell you. And it all happened before the deathof my blessed man, four years ago, let me see,— yes, four years ago, come Christmas."
Here the old woman stopped speaking, but went on with her knitting. Other thoughts seemed to occupy her mind. She was thinking, no doubt, of her blessed man, as German widows call their dead husbands. But Flemming having expressed an ardent wish to hear the wonderful story, she told it, in nearly the following words.
"There was once a poor old woman in Andernach whose name was Frau Martha, and she lived all alone in a house by herself, and loved all the Saints and the blessed Virgin, and was as good as an angel, and sold pies down by the Rheinkrahn. But her house was very old, and the roof-tiles were broken, and she was too poor to get new ones, and the rain kept coming in, and no Christian soul in Andernach would help her. But the Frau Martha was a good woman, and never did anybody any harm, but went to mass every morning, and sold pies by the Rheinkrahn. Now one dark, windy night, when all the good Christians in Andernachwere abed and asleep in the feathers, Frau Martha, who slept under the roof, heard a great noise over her head, and in her chamber, drip! drip! drip! as if the rain were dropping down through the broken tiles. Dear soul! and sure enough it was. And then there was a pounding and hammering overhead, as if somebody were at work on the roof; and she thought it was Pelz-Nickel tearing the tiles off, because she had not been to confession often enough. So she began to pray; and the faster she said her Pater-noster and her Ave-Maria, the faster Pelz-Nickel pounded and pulled; and drip! drip! drip! it went all round her in the dark chamber, till the poor woman was frightened out of her wits, and ran to the window to call for help. Then in a moment all was still,—death-still. But she saw a light streaming through the mist and rain, and a great shadow on the house opposite. And then somebody came down from the top of her house by a ladder, and had a lantern in his hand; and he took the ladder on his shoulder and went down thestreet. But she could not see clearly, because the window was streaked with rain. And in the morning the old broken tiles were found scattered about the street, and there were new ones on the roof, and the old house has never leaked to this blessed day.
"As soon as mass was over Frau Martha told the priest what had happened, and he said it was not Pelz-Nickel, but, without doubt, St. Castor or St. Florian. Then she went to the market and told Frau Bridget all about it; and Frau Bridget said, that, two nights before, Hans Claus, the cooper, had heard a great pounding in his shop, and in the morning found new hoops on all his old hogsheads; and that a man with a lantern and a ladder had been seen riding out of town at midnight on a donkey, and that the same night the old windmill, at Kloster St. Thomas, had been mended up, and the old gate of the churchyard at Feldkirche made as good as new, though nobody knew how the man got across the river. Then Frau Martha went down to the Rheinkrahn and told all thesestories over again; and the old ferryman of Fahr said he could tell something about it; for, the very night that the churchyard-gate was mended, he was lying awake in his bed, because he could not sleep, and he heard a loud knocking at the door, and somebody calling to him to get up and set him over the river. And when he got up, he saw a man down by the river with a lantern and a ladder; but as he was going down to him, the man blew out the light, and it was so dark he could not see who he was; and his boat was old and leaky, and he was afraid to set him over in the dark; but the man said he must be in Andernach that night; and so he set him over. And after they had crossed the river, he watched the man, till he came to an image of the Holy Virgin, and saw him put the ladder against the wall, and go up and light his lamp, and then walk along the street. And in the morning he found his old boat all caulked, and tight, and painted red, and he could not for his blessed life tell who did it, unless it werethe man with the lantern. Dear soul! how strange it was!
"And so it went on for some time; and, whenever the man with the lantern had been seen walking through the street at night, so sure as the morning came, some work had been done for the sake of some good soul; and everybody knew he did it; and yet nobody could find out who he was, nor where he lived;—for, whenever they came near him, he blew out his light, and turned down another street, and, if they followed him, he suddenly disappeared, nobody could tell how. And some said it was Rübezahl; and some, Pelz-Nickel; and some, St. Anthony-on-the-Health.
"Now one stormy night a poor, sinful creature was wandering about the streets, with her babe in her arms, and she was hungry, and cold, and no soul in Andernach would take her in. And when she came to the church, where the great crucifix stands, she saw no light in the little chapel at the corner; but she sat down on a stone at the foot of the cross and began to pray, and prayed,till she fell asleep, with her poor little babe on her bosom. But she did not sleep long; for a bright light shone full in her face; and, when she opened her eyes, she saw a pale man, with a lantern, standing right before her. He was almost naked; and there was blood upon his hands and body, and great tears in his beautiful eyes, and his face was like the face of the Saviour on the cross. Not a single word did he say to the poor woman; but looked at her compassionately, and gave her a loaf of bread, and took the little babe in his arms, and kissed it. Then the mother looked up to the great crucifix, but there was no image there; and she shrieked and fell down as if she were dead. And there she was found with her child; and a few days after they both died, and were buried together in one grave. And nobody would have believed her story, if a woman, who lived at the corner, had not gone to the window, when she heard the scream, and seen the figure hang the lantern up in its place, and then set the ladder against the wall, and go up and nailitself to the cross. Since that night it has never moved again. Ach! Herr Je!"
Such was the legend of the Christ of Andernach, as the old woman in spectacles told it to Flemming. It made a painful impression on his sick and morbid soul; and he felt now for the first time in full force, how great is the power of popular superstition.
The post-chaise was now at the door, and Flemming was soon on the road to Coblentz, a city which stands upon the Rhine, at the mouth of the Mosel, opposite Ehrenbreitstein. It is by no means a long drive from Andernach to Coblentz; and the only incident which occurred to enliven the way was the appearance of a fat, red-faced man on horseback, trotting slowly towards Andernach. As they met, the mad little postilion gave him a friendly cut with his whip, and broke out into an exclamation, which showed he was from Münster;
"Jesmariosp! my friend! How is the Man in the Custom-House?"
Now to any candid mind this would seem a fair question enough; but not so thought the red-faced man on horseback; for he waxed exceedingly angry, and replied, as the chaise whirled by;
"The devil take you, and your Westphalian ham, and pumpernickel!"
Flemming called to his servant, and the servant to the postilion, for an explanation of this short dialogue; and the explanation was, that on the belfry of the Kaufhaus in Coblentz, is a huge head, with a brazen helmet and a beard; and whenever the clock strikes, at each stroke of the hammer, this giant's head opens its great jaws and smites its teeth together, as if, like the brazen head of Friar Bacon, it would say; "Time was; Time is; Time is past." This figure is known through all the country round about, as "The Man in the Custom-House"; and, when a friend in the country meets a friend from Coblentz, instead of saying, "How are all the good people in Coblentz?"—he says, "How is the Man in the Custom-House?" Thus the giant has a great partto play in the town; and thus ended the first day of Flemming's Rhine-journey; and the only good deed he had done was to give an alms to a poor beggar woman, who lifted up her trembling hands and exclaimed;
"Thou blessed babe!"
After all, a journey up the Rhine, in the mists and solitude of December, is not so unpleasant as the reader may perhaps imagine. You have the whole road and river to yourself. Nobody is on the wing; hardly a single traveller. The ruins are the same; and the river, and the outlines of the hills; and there are few living figures in the landscape to wake you from your musings, distract your thoughts, and cover you with dust.
Thus, likewise, thought our traveller, as he continued his journey on the morrow. The day is overcast, and the clouds threaten rain or snow. Why does he stop at the little village of Capellen? Because, right above him on the high cliff, the glorious ruin of Stolzenfels is looking at him with itshollow eyes, and beckoning to him with its gigantic finger, as if to say; "Come up hither, and I will tell thee an old tale." Therefore he alights, and goes up the narrow village lane, and up the stone steps, and up the steep pathway, and throws himself into the arms of that ancient ruin, and holds his breath, to hear the quick footsteps of the falling snow, like the footsteps of angels descending upon earth. And that ancient ruin speaks to him with its hollow voice, and says;
"Beware of dreams! Beware of the illusions of fancy! Beware of the solemn deceivings of thy vast desires! Beneath me flows the Rhine, and, like the stream of Time, it flows amid the ruins of the Past. I see myself therein, and I know that I am old. Thou, too, shalt be old. Be wise in season. Like the stream of thy life, runs the stream beneath us. Down from the distant Alps, —out into the wide world, it bursts away, like a youth from the house of his fathers. Broad-breasted and strong, and with earnest endeavours, like manhood, it makes itself a way through these difficultmountain passes. And at length, in its old age, its stops, and its steps are weary and slow, and it sinks into the sand, and, through its grave, passes into the great ocean, which is its eternity. Thus shall it be with thee.
"In ancient times there dwelt within these halls a follower of Jesus of Jerusalem,—an Archbishop in the church of Christ. He gave himself up to dreams; to the illusions of fancy; to the vast desires of the human soul. He sought after the impossible. He sought after the Elixir of Life, —the Philosopher's Stone. The wealth, that should have fed the poor, was melted in his crucibles. Within these walls the Eagle of the clouds sucked the blood of the Red Lion, and received the spiritual Love of the Green Dragon, but alas! was childless. In solitude and utter silence did the disciple of the Hermetic Philosophy toil from day to day, from night to night. From the place where thou standest, he gazed at evening upon hills, and vales, and waters spread beneath him; and saw how the setting sun had changed them allto gold, by an alchymy more cunning than his own. He saw the world beneath his feet; and said in his heart, that he alone was wise. Alas! he read more willingly in the book of Paracelsus, than in the book of Nature; and, believing that `where reason hath experience, faith hath no mind,' would fain have made unto himself a child, not as Nature teaches us, but as the Philosopher taught,—a poor homunculus, in a glass bottle. And he died poor and childless!"
Whether it were worth while to climb the Stolzenfels to hear such a homily as this, some persons may perhaps doubt. But Paul Flemming doubted not. He laid the lesson to heart; and it would have saved him many an hour of sorrow, if he had learned that lesson better, and remembered it longer.
In ancient times, there stood in the citadel of Athens three statues of Minerva. The first was of olive wood, and, according to popular tradition, had fallen from heaven. The second was of bronze, commemorating the victory of Marathon;and the third of gold and ivory,—a great miracle of art, in the age of Pericles. And thus in the citadel of Time stands Man himself. In childhood, shaped of soft and delicate wood, just fallen from heaven; in manhood, a statue of bronze, commemorating struggle and victory; and lastly, in the maturity of age, perfectly shaped in gold and ivory,—a miracle of art!
Flemming had already lived through the oliveage. He was passing into the age of bronze, into his early manhood; and in his hands the flowers of Paradise were changing to the sword and shield.
And this reminds me, that I have not yet described my hero. I will do it now, as he stands looking down on the glorious landscape;—but in few words. Both in person and character he resembled Harold, the Fair-Hair of Norway, who is described, in the old Icelandic Death-Song of Regner Hairy-Breeches, as "the young chief so proud of his flowing locks; he who spent his mornings among the young maidens; he who loved toconverse with the handsome widows." This was an amiable weakness; and it sometimes led him into mischief. Imagination was the ruling power of his mind. His thoughts were twin-born; the thought itself, and its figurative semblance in the outer world. Thus, through the quiet, still waters of his soul each image floated double, "swan and shadow."
These traits of character, a good heart and a poetic imagination, made his life joyous and the world beautiful; till at length Death cut down the sweet, blue flower, that bloomed beside him, and wounded him with that sharp sickle, so that he bowed his head, and would fain have been bound up in the same sheaf with the sweet, blue flower. Then the world seemed to him less beautiful, and life became earnest. It would have been well if he could have forgotten the past; that he might not so mournfully have lived in it, but might have enjoyed and improved the present. But this his heart refused to do; and ever, as he floated upon the great sea of life, he looked down through thetransparent waters, checkered with sunshine and shade, into the vast chambers of the mighty deep, in which his happier days had sunk, and wherein they were lying still visible, like golden sands, and precious stones, and pearls; and, half in despair, half in hope, he grasped downward after them again, and drew back his hand, filled only with seaweed, and dripping with briny tears!— And between him and those golden sands, a radiant image floated, like the spirit in Dante's Paradise, singing "Ave-Maria!" and while it sang, down-sinking, and slowly vanishing away.
The truth is, that in all things he acted more from impulse than from fixed principle; as is the case with most young men. Indeed, his principles hardly had time to take root; for he pulled them all up, every now and then, as children do the flowers they have planted,—to see if they are growing. Yet there was much in him which was good; for underneath the flowers and green-sward of poetry, and the good principles which would have taken root, had he given them time, therelay a strong and healthy soil of common sense,— freshened by living springs of feeling, and enriched by many faded hopes, that had fallen upon it like dead leaves.
"Allez Fuchs! allez lustig!" cried the impatient postilion to his horses, in accents, which, like the wild echo of the Lurley Felsen, came first from one side of the river, and then from the other,— that is to say, in words alternately French and German. The truth is, he was tired of waiting; and when Flemming had at length resumed his seat in the post-chaise, the poor horses had to make up the time lost in dreams on the mountain. This is far oftener the case, than most people imagine. One half of the world has to sweat and groan, that the other half may dream. It would have been a difficult task for the traveller or his postilion to persuade the horses, that these dreams were all for their good.
The next stopping-place was the little tavern of the Star, an out-of-the-way corner in the town of Salzig. It stands on the banks of the Rhine; and, directly in front of it, sheer from the water's edge, rise the mountains of Liebenstein and Sternenfels, each with its ruined castle. These are the Brothers of the old tradition, still gazing at each other face to face; and beneath them in the valley stands a cloister,—meek emblem of that orphan child, they both so passionately loved.
In a small, flat-bottomed boat did the landlady's daughter row Flemming "over the Rhine-stream, rapid and roaring wide." She was a beautiful girl of sixteen; with black hair, and dark, lovely eyes, and a face that had a story to tell. How different faces are in this particular! Some of them speak not. They are books in which not a line is written, save perhaps a date. Others are great family bibles, with all the Old and New Testament written in them. Others are Mother Goose and nursery tales;—others bad tragedies or pickle-herring farces; and others, like that of the landlady's daughter at the Star, sweet love-anthologies, and songs of the affections. It was on that account, that Flemming said to her, as they glided out into the swift stream;
"My dear child! do you know the story of the Liebenstein?"
"The story of the Liebenstein," she answered, "I got by heart, when I was a little child."
And here her large, dark, passionate eyes looked into Flemming's, and he doubted not, that she had learned the story far too soon, and far too well. That story he longed to hear, as if it were unknown to him; for he knew that the girl, who had got it by heart when a child, would tell it as it should be told. So he begged her to repeat the story, which she was but too glad to do; for she loved and believed it, as if it had all been written in the Bible. But before she began, she rested a moment on her oars, and taking the crucifix, which hung suspended from her neck, kissed it, and then let it sink down into her bosom, as if it were an anchor she was letting down into her heart.Meanwhile her moist, dark eyes were turned to heaven. Perhaps her soul was walking with the souls of Cunizza, and Rahab, and Mary Magdalen. Or perhaps she was thinking of that Nun, of whom St. Gregory says, in his Dialogues, that, having greedily eaten a lettuce in a garden, without making the sign of the cross, she found herself soon after possessed with a devil.
The probability, however, is, that she was looking up to the ruined castles only, and not to heaven, for she soon began her story, and told Flemming how, a great, great many years ago, an old man lived in the Liebenstein with his two sons; and how both the young men loved the Lady Geraldine, an orphan, under their father's care; and how the elder brother went away in despair, and the younger was betrothed to the Lady Geraldine; and how they were as happy as Aschenputtel and the Prince. And then the holy Saint Bernard came and carried away all the young men to the war, just as Napoleon did afterwards; and the young lord went to the Holy Land, and theLady Geraldine sat in her tower and wept, and waited for her lover's return, while the old father built the Sternenfels for them to live in when they were married. And when it was finished, the old man died; and the elder brother came back and lived in the Liebenstein, and took care of the gentle Lady. Ere long there came news from the Holy Land, that the war was over; and the heart of the gentle Lady beat with joy, till she heard that her faithless lover was coming back with a Greek wife,—the wicked man! and then she went into a convent and became a holy nun. So the young lord of Sternenfels came home, and lived in his castle in great splendor with the Greek woman, who was a wicked woman, and did what she ought not to do. But the elder brother was angry for the wrong done the gentle Lady, and challenged the lord of Sternenfels to single combat. And, while they were fighting with their great swords in the valley of Bornhofen behind the castle, the convent bells began to ring, and the Lady Geraldine came forth with a train of nuns alldressed in white, and made the brothers friends again, and told them she was the bride of Heaven, and happier in her convent than she could have been in the Liebenstein or the Sternenfels. And when the brothers returned, they found that the false Greek wife had gone away with another knight. So they lived together in peace, and were never married. And when they died—"
"Lisbeth! Lisbeth!" cried a sharp voice from the shore, "Lisbeth! Where are you taking the gentleman?"
This recalled the poor girl to her senses; and she saw how fast they were floating down stream. For in telling the story she had forgotten every thing else, and the swift current had swept them down to the tall walnut trees of Kamp. They landed in front of the Capucin Monastery. Lisbeth led the way through the little village, and turning to the right pointed up the romantic, lonely valley which leads to the Liebenstein, and even offered to go up. But Flemming patted her cheek and shook his head. He went up the valley alone.
The man in the play, who wished for `some forty pounds of lovely beef, placed in a Mediterranean sea of brewis,' might have seen his ample desires almost realized at the table d'hôte of the Rheinischen Hof, in Mayence, where Flemming dined that day. At the head of the table sat a gentleman, with a smooth, broad forehead, and large, intelligent eyes. He was from Baireuth in Franconia; and talked about poetry and Jean Paul, to a pale, romantic-looking lady on his right. There was music all dinner-time, at the other end of the hall; a harp and a horn and a voice; so that a great part of the fat gentleman's conversation with the pale lady was lost to Flemming, who sat opposite to her, and could look right into her large, melancholy eyes. But what heheard, so much interested him,—indeed, the very name of the beloved Jean Paul would have been enough for this,—that he ventured to join in the conversation, and asked the German if he had known the poet personally.
"Yes; I knew him well," replied the stranger. "I am a native of Baireuth, where he passed the best years of his life. In my mind the man and the author are closely united. I never read a page of his writings without hearing his voice, and seeing his form before me. There he sits, with his majestic, mountainous forehead, his mild blue eyes, and finely cut nose and mouth; his massive frame clad loosely and carelessly in an old green frock, from the pockets of which the corners of books project, and perhaps the end of a loaf of bread, and the nose of a bottle;—a straw hat, lined with green, lying near him; a huge walking-stick in his hand, and at his feet a white poodle, with pink eyes and a string round his neck. You would sooner have taken him for a master-carpenter than for a poet. Is he a favorite author of yours?"
Flemming answered in the affirmative.
"But a foreigner must find it exceedingly difficult to understand him," said the gentleman. "It is by no means an easy task for us Germans."
"I have always observed," replied Flemming, "that the true understanding and appreciation of a poet depend more upon individual, than upon national character. If there be a sympathy between the minds of writer and reader, the bounds and barriers of a foreign tongue are soon overleaped. If you once understand an author's character, the comprehension of his writings becomes easy."
"Very true," replied the German, "and the character of Richter is too marked to be easily misunderstood. Its prominent traits are tenderness and manliness,—qualities, which are seldom found united in so high a degree as in him. Over all he sees, over all he writes, are spread the sunbeams of a cheerful spirit,—the light of inexhaustible human love. Every sound of human joy and of human sorrow finds a deep-resoundingecho in his bosom. In every man, he loves his humanity only, not his superiority. The avowed object of all his literary labors was to raise up again the down-sunken faith in God, virtue, and immortality; and, in an egotistical, revolutionary age, to warm again our human sympathies, which have now grown cold. And not less boundless is his love for nature,—for this outward, beautiful world. He embraces it all in his arms."
"Yes," answered Flemming, almost taking the words out of the stranger's mouth, "for in his mind all things become idealized. He seems to describe himself when he describes the hero of his Titan, as a child, rocking in a high wind upon the branches of a full-blossomed apple-tree, and, as its summit, blown abroad by the wind, now sunk him in deep green, and now tossed him aloft in deep blue and glancing sunshine,—in his imagination stood that tree gigantic;—it grew alone in the universe, as if it were the tree of eternal life; its roots struck down into the abyss; the white and red clouds hung as blossoms upon it; the moon asfruit; the little stars sparkled like dew, and Albano reposed in its measureless summit; and a storm swayed the summit out of Day into Night, and out of Night into Day."
"Yet the spirit of love," interrupted the Franconian, "was not weakness, but strength. It was united in him with great manliness. The sword of his spirit had been forged and beaten by poverty. Its temper had been tried by a thirty years' war. It was not broken, not even blunted; but rather strengthened and sharpened by the blows it gave and received. And, possessing this noble spirit of humanity, endurance, and self-denial, he made literature his profession; as if he had been divinely commissioned to write. He seems to have cared for nothing else, to have thought of nothing else, than living quietly and making books. He says, that he felt it his duty, not to enjoy, nor to acquire, but to write; and boasted, that he had made as many books as he had lived years."
"And what do you Germans consider the prominent characteristics of his genius?"
"Most undoubtedly his wild imagination and his playfulness. He throws over all things a strange and magic coloring. You are startled at the boldness and beauty of his figures and illustrations, which are scattered everywhere with a reckless prodigality;—multitudinous, like the blossoms of early summer,—and as fragrant and beautiful. With a thousand extravagances are mingled ten thousand beauties of thought and expression, which kindle the reader's imagination, and lead it onward in a bold flight, through the glow of sunrise and sunset, and the dewy coldness and starlight of summer nights. He is difficult to understand,—intricate,—strange,—drawing his illustrations from every by-corner of science, art, and nature,—a comet, among the bright stars of German literature. When you read his works, it is as if you were climbing a high mountain, in merry company, to see the sun rise. At times you are enveloped in mist,—the morning wind sweeps by you with a shout,—you hear the far-off muttering thunders. Wide beneath you spreads the landscape,—field,meadow, town, and winding river. The ringing of distant church-bells, or the sound of solemn village clock, reaches you;—then arises the sweet and manifold fragrance of flowers,—the birds begin to sing,—the vapors roll away,—up comes the glorious sun,—you revel like the lark in the sunshine and bright blue heaven, and all is a delirious dream of soul and sense,—when suddenly a friend at your elbow laughs aloud, and offers you a piece of Bologna sausage. As in real life, so in his writings,—the serious and the comic, the sublime and the grotesque, the pathetic and the ludicrous are mingled together. At times he is sententious, energetic, simple; then again, obscure and diffuse. His thoughts are like mummies embalmed in spices, and wrapped about with curious envelopements; but within these the thoughts themselves are kings. At times glad, beautiful images, airy forms, move by you, graceful, harmonious;— at times the glaring, wild-looking fancies, chained together by hyphens, brackets, and dashes, brave and base, high and low, all in their motley dresses, go sweeping down the dusty page, like the galley-slaves, that sweep the streets of Rome, where you may chance to see the nobleman and the peasant manacled together."
Flemming smiled at the German's warmth, to which the presence of the lady, and the Laubenheimer wine, seemed each to have contributed something, and then said;
"Better an outlaw, than not free!—These are his own words. And thus he changes at his will. Like the God Thor, of the old Northern mythology, he now holds forth the seven bright stars in the bright heaven above us, and now hides himself in clouds, and pounds away with his great hammer."
"And yet this is not affectation in him," rejoined the German. "It is his nature, it is Jean Paul. And the figures and ornaments of his style, wild, fantastic, and oft-times startling, like those in Gothic cathedrals, are not merely what they seem, but massive coignes and buttresses, which support the fabric. Remove them, and the roofand walls fall in. And through these gurgoyles, these wild faces, carved upon spouts and gutters, flow out, like gathered rain, the bright, abundant thoughts, that have fallen from heaven.
"And all he does, is done with a kind of serious playfulness. He is a sea-monster, disporting himself on the broad ocean; his very sport is earnest; there is something majestic and serious about it. In every thing there is strength, a rough good-nature, all sunshine overhead, and underneath the heavy moaning of the sea. Well may he be called `Jean Paul, the Only-One.' "
With such discourse the hour of dinner passed; and after dinner Flemming went to the Cathedral. They were singing vespers. A beadle, dressed in blue, with a cocked hat, and a crimson sash and collar, was strutting, like a turkey, along the aisles. This important gentleman conducted Flemming through the church, and showed him the choir, with its heavy-sculptured stalls of oak, and the beautiful figures in brown stone, over the bishops' tombs. He then led him, by a side-door, into theold and ruined cloisters of St. Willigis. Through the low gothic arches the sunshine streamed upon the pavement of tombstones, whose images and inscriptions are mostly effaced by the footsteps of many generations. There stands the tomb of Frauenlob, the Minnesinger. His face is sculptured on an entablature in the wall; a fine, strongly-marked, and serious countenance. Below it is a bas-relief, representing the poet's funeral. He is carried to his grave by ladies, whose praise he sang, and thereby won the name of Frauenlob.
"This then," said Flemming, "is the grave, not of Praise-God Bare-bones, but of Praise-the-Ladies Meissen, who wrote songs `somewhat of lust, and somewhat of love.' But where sleeps the dust of his rival and foe, sweet Master Bartholomew Rainbow?"
He meant this for an aside; but the turkey-cock picked it up and answered;
"I do not know. He did not belong to this parish."
It was already night, when Flemming crossedthe Roman bridge over the Nahe, and entered the town of Bingen. He stopped at the White Horse; and, before going to bed, looked out into the dim starlight from his window towards the Rhine, and his heart leaped up to behold the bold outline of the neighbouring hills crested with Gothic ruins;—which in the morning proved to be only a high, slated roof with fantastic chimneys.
The morning was bright and frosty; and the river tinged with gay colors from the rising sun. A soft, thin vapor floated in the air. In the sunbeams flashed the hoar-frost, like silver stars; and through a long avenue of trees, whose dripping branches bent and scattered pearls before him, Paul Flemming journeyed on in triumph.
I will not prolong this journey, for I am weary and way-worn, and would fain be at Heidelberg with my readers, and my hero. It was already night when he reached the Manheim gate, and drove down the long Hauptstrasse so slowly, that it seemed to him endless. The shops werelighted on each side of the street, and he saw faces at the windows here and there, and figures passing in the lamp-light, visible for a moment and then swallowed up in the darkness. The thoughts that filled his mind were strange; as are always the thoughts of a traveller, who enters for the first time a strange city. This little world had been going on for centuries before he came; and would go on for centuries after he was gone. Of all the thousands who inhabited it he knew nothing; and what knew they, or thought, of the stranger, who, in that close post-chaise, weary with travel, and chilled by the evening wind, was slowly rumbling over the paved street! Truly, this world can go on without us, if we would but think so. If it had been a hearse instead of a post-chaise, it would have been all the same to the people of Heidelberg,—though by no means the same to Paul Flemming.
But at the farther end of the city, near the Castle and the Carls-Thor, one warm heart was waiting to receive him; and this was the German heart of his friend, the Baron of Hohenfels, with whom he was to pass the winter in Heidelberg. No sooner had the carriage stopped at the irongrated gate, and the postilion blown his horn, to announce the arrival of a traveller, than the Baron was seen among the servants at the door; and, a few moments afterwards, the two long-absent friends were in each other's arms, and Flemming received a kiss upon each cheek, and another on the mouth, as the pledge and seal of the German's friendship. They held each other long by the hand, and looked into each other's faces, and saw themselves in each other's eyes, both literally and figuratively; literally, inasmuch as the images were there; and figuratively, inasmuch as each was imagining what the other thought of him, after the lapse of some years. In friendly hopes and questionings and answers, the evening glided away at the supper-table, where many more things were discussed than the roasted hare, and the Johannisberger; and they sat late into the night, conversing of the thoughts and feelings and delights, which fill the hearts of young men, who have already enjoyed and suffered, and hoped and been disappointed.
High and hoar on the forehead of the Jettenbühl stands the Castle of Heidelberg. Behind it rise the oak-crested hills of the Geissberg and the Kaiserstuhl; and in front, from the broad terrace of masonry, you can almost throw a stone upon the roofs of the city, so close do they lie beneath. Above this terrace rises the broad front of the chapel of Saint Udalrich. On the left, stands the slender octagon tower of the horologe, and, on the right, a huge round tower, battered and shattered by the mace of war, shores up with its broad shoulders the beautiful palace and garden-terrace of Elisabeth, wife of the Pfalzgraf Frederick. In the rear are older palaces and towers, forming a vast, irregular quadrangle;—Rodolph's ancientcastle, with its Gothic gloriette and fantastic gables; the Giant's Tower, guarding the drawbridge over the moat; the Rent Tower, with the linden-trees growing on its summit, and the magnificent Rittersaal of Otho-Henry, Count Palatine of the Rhine and grand seneschal of the Holy Roman Empire. From the gardens behind the castle, you pass under the archway of the Giant's Tower into the great court-yard. The diverse architecture of different ages strikes the eye; and curious sculptures. In niches on the wall of Saint Udalrich's chapel stand rows of knights in armour, all broken and dismembered; and on the front of Otho's Rittersaal, the heroes of Jewish history and classic fable. You enter the open and desolate chambers of the ruin; and on every side are medallions and family arms; the Globe of the Empire and the Golden Fleece, or the Eagle of the Cæsars, resting on the escutcheons of Bavaria and the Palatinate. Over the windows and door-ways and chimney-pieces, are sculptures and mouldings of exquisite workmanship; and the eyeis bewildered by the profusion of caryatides, and arabesques, and rosettes, and fan-like flutings, and garlands of fruits and flowers and acorns, and bullocks'-heads with draperies of foliage, and muzzles of lions, holding rings in their teeth. The cunning hand of Art was busy for six centuries, in raising and adorning these walls; the mailed hands of Time and War have defaced and overthrown them in less than two. Next to the Alhambra of Granada, the Castle of Heidelberg is the most magnificent ruin of the Middle Ages.
In the valley below flows the rushing stream of the Neckar. Close from its margin, on the opposite side, rises the Mountain of All Saints, crowned with the ruins of a convent; and up the valley stretches the mountain-curtain of the Odenwald. So close and many are the hills, which eastward shut the valley in, that the river seems a lake. But westward it opens, upon the broad plain of the Rhine, like the mouth of a trumpet; and like the blast of a trumpet is at times the wintry wind through this narrow mountain pass. The blueAlsatian hills rise beyond; and, on a platform or strip of level land, between the Neckar and the mountains, right under the castle, stands the city of Heidelberg; as the old song says, "a pleasant city, when it has done raining."
Something of this did Paul Flemming behold, when he rose the next morning and looked from his window. It was a warm, vapory morning, and a struggle was going on between the mist and the rising sun. The sun had taken the hill-tops, but the mist still kept possession of the valley and the town. The steeple of the great church rose through a dense mass of snow-white clouds; and eastward, on the hills, the dim vapors were rolling across the windows of the ruined castle, like the fiery smoke of a great conflagration. It seemed to him an image of the rising of the sun of Truth on a benighted world; its light streamed through the ruins of centuries; and, down in the valley of Time, the cross on the Christian church caught its rays, though the priests were singing in mist and darkness below.
In the warm breakfast-parlour he found the Baron, waiting for him. He was lying upon a sofa, in morning gown and purple-velvet slippers, both with flowers upon them. He had a guitar in his hand, and a pipe in his mouth, at the same time smoking, playing, and humming his favorite song from Goethe;
"The water rushed, the water swelled,
A fisher sat thereby."
Flemming could hardly refrain from laughing at the sight of his friend; and told him it reminded him of a street-musician he once saw in Aix-la-Chapelle, who was playing upon six instruments at once; having a helmet with bells on his head, a Pan's-reed in his cravat, a fiddle in his hand, a triangle on his knee, cymbals on his heels, and on his back a bass-drum, which he played with his elbows. To tell the truth, the Baron of Hohenfels was rather a miscellaneous youth, rather a universal genius. He pursued all things with eagerness, but for a short time only; music, poetry, painting, pleasure, even the study of the Pandects. Hisfeelings were keenly alive to the enjoyment of life. His great defect was, that he was too much in love with human nature. But by the power of imagination, in him, the bearded goat was changed to a bright Capricornus:—no longer an animal on earth, but a constellation in heaven. An easy and indolent disposition made him gentle and childlike in his manners; and, in short, the beauty of his character, like that of the precious opal, was owing to a defect in its organization. His person was tall and slightly built; his hair light; and his eyes blue, and as beautiful as those of a girl. In the tones of his voice, there was something indescribably gentle and winning; and he spoke the German language, with the soft, musical accent of his native province of Curland. In his manners, if he had not `Antinous' easy sway,' he had at least an easy sway of his own. Such, in few words, was the bosom friend of Flemming.
"And what do you think of Heidelberg and the old castle up there?" said he, as they seated themselves at the breakfast-table.
"Last night the town seemed very long to me," replied Flemming; "and as to the castle, I have as yet had but a glimpse of it through the mist. They tell me there is nothing finer in its way, excepting the Alhambra of Granada; and no doubt I shall find it so. Only I wish the stone were gray and not red. But, red or gray, I foresee that I shall waste many a long hour in its desolate halls. Pray, does anybody live up there now-a-days?"
"Nobody," answered the Baron, "but the man, who shows the Heidelberg Ton, and Monsieur Charles de Grainberg, a Frenchman, who has been there sketching ever since the year eighteen-hundred and ten. He has, moreover, written a super-magnificent description of the ruin, in which he says, that during the day only birds of prey disturb it with their piercing cries, and at night, screech-owls, and other fallow deer. These are his own words. You must buy his book and his sketches."
"Yes, the quotation and the tone of your voice will certainly persuade me so to do."
"Take his or none, my friend, for you will find no others. And seriously, his sketches are very good. There is one on the wall there, which is beautiful, save and except that straddle-bug figure among the bushes in the corner."
"But is there no ghost, no haunted chamber in the old castle?" asked Flemming, after casting a hasty glance at the picture.
"Oh, certainly," replied the Baron; "there are two. There is the ghost of the Virgin Mary in Ruprecht's Tower, and the Devil in the Dungeon."
"Ha! that is grand!" exclaimed Flemming, with evident delight. "Tell me the whole story, quickly! I am as curious as a child."
"It is a tale of the times of Louis the Debonnaire," said the Baron, with a smile; "a mouldy tradition of a credulous age. His brother Frederick lived here in the castle with him, and had a flirtation with Leonore von Luzelstein, a lady of the court, whom he afterwards despised, and was consequently most cordially hated by her. Frompolitical motives he was equally hateful to certain petty German tyrants, who, in order to effect his ruin, accused him of heresy. But his brother Louis would not deliver him up to their fury, and they resolved to effect by stratagem, what they could not by intrigue. Accordingly, Leonore von Luzelstein, disguised as the Virgin Mary, and the father confessor of the Elector, in the costume of Satan, made their appearance in the Elector's bed-chamber at midnight, and frightened him so horribly, that he consented to deliver up his brother into the hands of two Black Knights, who pretended to be ambassadors from the Vehm-Gericht. They proceeded together to Frederick's chamber; where luckily old Gemmingen, a brave soldier, kept guard behind the arras. The monk went foremost in his Satanic garb; but, no sooner had he set foot in the prince's bed-chamber, than the brave Gemmingen drew his sword, and said quaintly, `Die, wretch!' and so he died. The rest took to their heels, and were heard of no more. And now the souls ofLeonore and the monk haunt the scene of their midnight crime. You will find the story in Grainberg's book, worked up with a kind of red-morocco and burnt-cork sublimity, and great melo-dramatic clanking of chains, and hooting of owls, and other fallow deer!"
"After breakfast," said Flemming, "we will go up to the castle. I must get acquainted with this mirror of owls, this modern Till Eulenspiegel. See what a glorious morning we have! It is truly a wondrous winter! what summer sunshine; what soft Venetian fogs! How the wanton, treacherous air coquets with the old gray-beard trees! Such weather makes the grass and our beards grow apace! But we have an old saying in English, that winter never rots in the sky. So he will come down at last in his old-fashioned, mealy coat. We shall have snow in spring; and the blossoms will be all snow-flakes. And afterwards a summer, which will be no summer, but, as Jean Paul says, only a winter painted green. Is it not so?"
"Unless I am much deceived in the climate ofHeidelberg," replied the Baron, "we shall not have to wait long for snow. We have sudden changes here, and I should not marvel much if it snowed before night."
"The greater reason for making good use of the morning sunshine, then. Let us hasten to the castle, after which my heart yearns."
The forebodings of the Baron proved true. In the afternoon the weather changed. The western wind began to blow, and its breath drew a cloud-veil over the face of heaven, as a breath does over the human face in a mirror. Soon the snow began to fall. Athwart the distant landscape it swept like a white mist. The storm-wind came from the Alsatian hills, and struck the dense clouds aslant through the air. And ever faster fell the snow, a roaring torrent from those mountainous clouds. The setting sun glared wildly from the summit of the hills, and sank like a burning ship at sea, wrecked in the tempest. Thus the evening set in; and winter stood at the gate wagging his white and shaggy beard, like an old harper, chanting an old rhyme:—"How cold it is! how cold it is!"
"I like such a storm as this," said Flemming, who stood at the window, looking out into the tempest and the gathering darkness. "The silent falling of snow is to me one of the most solemn things in nature. The fall of autumnal leaves does not so much affect me. But the driving storm is grand. It startles me; it awakens me. It is wild and woful, like my own soul. I cannot help thinking of the sea; how the waves run and toss their arms about,—and the wind plays on those great harps, made by the shrouds and masts of ships. Winter is here in earnest! Whew! How the old churl whistles and threshes the snow! Sleet and rain are falling too. Already the trees are bearded with icicles; and the two broad branches of yonder pine look like the white mustache of some old German Baron."
"And to-morrow it will look more wintry still," said his friend. "We shall wake up and find that the frost-spirit has been at work all night building Gothic Cathedrals on our windows, just as the devil built the Cathedral of Cologne. Sodraw the curtains, and come sit here by the warm fire."
"And now," said Flemming, having done as his friend desired, "tell me something of Heidelberg and its University. I suppose we shall lead about as solitary and studious a life here as we did of yore in little Göttingen, with nothing to amuse us, save our own day-dreams."
"Pretty much so," replied the Baron; "which cannot fail to please you, since you are in pursuit of tranquillity. As to the University, it is, as you know, one of the oldest in Germany. It was founded in the fourteenth century by the Count Palatine Ruprecht, and had in the first year more than five hundred students, all busily committing to memory, after the old scholastic wise, the rules of grammar versified by Alexander de Villa Dei, and the extracts made by Peter the Spaniard from Michel Psellus's Synopsis of Aristotle's Organon, and the Categories, with Porphory's Commentaries. Truly, I do not much wonder, that Eregina Scotus should have been put to death byhis scholars with their penknives. They must have been pushed to the very verge of despair."
"What a strange picture a University presents to the imagination. The lives of scholars in their cloistered stillness;—literary men of retired habits, and Professors who study sixteen hours a day, and never see the world but on a Sunday. Nature has, no doubt, for some wise purpose, placed in their hearts this love of literary labor and seclusion. Otherwise, who would feed the undying lamp of thought? But for such men as these, a blast of wind through the chinks and crannies of this old world, or the flapping of a conqueror's banner, would blow it out forever. The light of the soul is easily extinguished. And whenever I reflect upon these things I become aware of the great importance, in a nation's history, of the individual fame of scholars and literary men. I fear, that it is far greater than the world is willing to acknowledge; or, perhaps I should say, than the world has thought of acknowledging. Blot out from England's history the names of Chaucer,Shakspere, Spenser, and Milton only, and how much of her glory would you blot out with them! Take from Italy such names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, and how much would still be wanting to the completeness of her glory! How would the history of Spain look if the leaves were torn out, on which are written the names of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon! What would be the fame of Portugal, without her Camoens; of France, without her Racine, and Rabelais, and Voltaire; or Germany, without her Martin Luther, her Goethe, and Schiller!—Nay, what were the nations of old, without their philosophers, poets, and historians! Tell me, do not these men in all ages and in all places, emblazon with bright colors the armorial bearings of their country? Yes, and far more than this; for in all ages and all places they give humanity assurance of its greatness; and say; Call not this time or people wholly barbarous; for thus much, even then and there, could the human mind achieve! But the boisterous world has hardlythought of acknowledging all this. Therein it has shown itself somewhat ungrateful. Else, whence the great reproach, the general scorn, the loud derision, with which, to take a familiar example, the monks of the Middle Ages are regarded! That they slept their lives away is most untrue. For in an age when books were few,—so few, so precious, that they were often chained to their oaken shelves with iron chains, like galley-slaves to their benches, these men, with their laborious hands, copied upon parchment all the lore and wisdom of the past, and transmitted it to us. Perhaps it is not too much to say, that, but for these monks, not one line of the classics would have reached our day. Surely, then, we can pardon something to those superstitious ages, perhaps even the mysticism of the scholastic philosophy, since, after all, we can find no harm in it, only the mistaking of the possible for the real, and the high aspirings of the human mind after a long-sought and unknown somewhat. I think the name of Martin Luther, the monk of Wittemberg, alone sufficient to redeem all monkhoodfrom the reproach of laziness! If this will not, perhaps the vast folios of Thomas Aquinas will;—or the countless manuscripts, still treasured in old libraries, whose yellow and wrinkled pages remind one of the hands that wrote them, and the faces that once bent over them."
"An eloquent homily," said the Baron laughing, "a most touching appeal in behalf of suffering humanity! For my part, I am no friend of this entire seclusion from the world. It has a very injurious effect on the mind of a scholar. The Chinese proverb is true; a single conversation across the table with a wise man, is better than ten years' mere study of books. I have known some of these literary men, who thus shut themselves up from the world. Their minds never come in contact with those of their fellow-men. They read little. They think much. They are mere dreamers. They know not what is new nor what is old. They often strike upon trains of thought, which stand written in good authors some century or so back, and are even current in the mouths of men aroundthem. But they know it not; and imagine they are bringing forward something very original, when they publish their thoughts."
"It reminds me," replied Flemming, "of what Dr. Johnson said of Goldsmith, when he proposed to travel abroad in order to bring home improvements;—`He will bring home a wheelbarrow, and call that an improvement.' It is unfortunately the same with some of these scholars."
"And the worst of it is," said the Baron, "that, in solitude, some fixed idea will often take root in the mind, and grow till it overshadow all one's thoughts. To this must all opinions come; no thought can enter there, which shall not be wedded to the fixed idea. There it remains, and grows. It is like the watchman's wife, in the tower of Waiblingen, who grew to such a size, that she could not get down the narrow stair-case; and, when her husband died, his successor was forced to marry the fat widow in the tower."
"I remember an old English comedy," said Flemming laughing, "in which a scholar is described, as a creature, that can strike fire in the morning at his tinder-box,—put on a pair of lined slippers,—sit ruminating till dinner, and then go to his meat when the bell rings;—one that hath a peculiar gift in a cough, and a license to spit;— or, if you will have him defined by negatives, he is one that cannot make a good leg;—one that cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly. What think you of that?"
"That it is just as people are always represented in English comedy," said the Baron. "The portrait is over-charged,—caricatured."
"And yet," continued Flemming, "no longer ago than yesterday, in the Preface of a work by Dr. Rosenkranz, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Halle, I read this passage."
He opened a book and read.
"Here in Halle, where we have no public garden and no Tivoli, no London Exchange, no Paris Chamber of Deputies, no Berlin nor Vienna Theatres, no Strassburg Minster, nor Salzburg Alps,— no Grecian ruins nor fantastic Catholicism, in fine,nothing, which after one's daily task is finished, can divert and refresh him, without his knowing or caring how,—I consider the sight of a proof-sheet quite as delightful as a walk in the Prater of Vienna. I fill my pipe very quietly, take out my ink-stand and pens, seat myself in the corner of my sofa, read, correct, and now for the first time really set about thinking what I have written. To see this origin of a book, this metamorphosis of manuscript into print, is a delight to which I give myself up entirely. Look you, this melancholy pleasure, which would have furnished the departed Voss with worthy matter for more than one blessed Idyl—(the more so, as on such occasions, I am generally arrayed in a morning gown, though I am sorry to say, not a calamanco one, with great flowers;) this melancholy pleasure was already grown here in Halle to a sweet, pedantic habit. Since I began my hermit's life here, I have been printing; and so long as I remain here, I shall keep on printing. In all probability, I shall die with a proof-sheet in my hand."
"This," said Flemming, closing the book, "is no caricature by a writer of comedy, but a portrait by a man's own hand. We can see by it how easily, under certain circumstances, one may glide into habits of seclusion, and in a kind of undress, slipshod hardihood, with a pipe and a proof-sheet, defy the world. Into this state scholars have too often fallen; thus giving some ground for the prevalent opinion, that scholarship and rusticity are inseparable. To me, I confess, it is painful to see the scholar and the world assume so often a hostile attitude, and set each other at defiance. Surely, it is a characteristic trait of a great and liberal mind, that it recognises humanity in all its forms and conditions. I am a student;—and always, when I sit alone at night, I recognise the divinity of the student, as she reveals herself to me in the smoke of the midnight lamp. But, because solitude and books are not unpleasant to me,—nay, wished-for,—sought after,—shall I say to my brother, Thou fool! Shall I take the world by the beard and say, Thou art old, and mad!—Shall I look society in the face and say, Thou art heartless! —Heartless! Beware of that word! Life, says very wisely the good Jean Paul, Life in every shape, should be precious to us, for the same reason that the Turks carefully collect every scrap of paper that comes in their way, because the name of God may be written upon it. Nothing is more true than this, yet nothing more neglected!"
"If it be painful to see this misunderstanding between scholars and the world," said the Baron, "I think it is still more painful to see the private sufferings of authors by profession. How many have languished in poverty, how many died broken-hearted, how many gone mad with over-excitement and disappointed hopes! How instructive and painfully interesting are their lives! with so many weaknesses,—so much to pardon, —so much to pity,—so much to admire! I think he was not so far out of the way, who said, that, next to the Newgate Calendar, the Biography of Authors is the most sickening chapter in the history of man."
"It is indeed enough to make one's heart ache!" interrupted Flemming. "Only think of Johnson and Savage, rambling about the streets of London at midnight, without a place to sleep in; Otway starved to death; Cowley mad, and howling like a dog, through the aisles of Chichester Cathedral, at the sound of church music; and Goldsmith, strutting up Fleet Street in his peach-blossom coat, to knock a bookseller over the pate with one of his own volumes; and then, in his poverty, about to marry his landlady in Green Arbour Court."
"A life of sorrow and privation, a hard life, indeed, do these poor devil authors have of it," replied the Baron; "and then at last must get them to the work-house, or creep away into some hospital to die."
"After all," said Flemming with a sigh, "poverty is not a vice."
"But something worse," interrupted the Baron; "as Dufresny said, when he married his laundress, because he could not pay her bill. Hewas the author, as you know, of the opera of Lot; at whose representation the great pun was made; —I say the great pun, as we say the great ton of Heidelberg. As one of the performers was singing the line, `L'amour a vaincu Loth,' (vingt culottes,) a voice from the pit cried out, `Qu'il en donne une à l'auteur!' "
Flemming laughed at the unseasonable jest; and then, after a short pause, continued;
"And yet, if you look closely at the causes of these calamities of authors, you will find, that many of them spring from false and exaggerated ideas of poetry and the poetic character; and from disdain of common sense, upon which all character, worth having, is founded. This comes from keeping aloof from the world, apart from our fellow-men; disdainful of society, as frivolous. By too much sitting still the body becomes unhealthy; and soon the mind. This is nature's law. She will never see her children wronged. If the mind, which rules the body, ever forgets itself so far as to trample upon its slave, the slave is never generousenough to forgive the injury; but will rise and smite its oppressor. Thus has many a monarch mind been dethroned."
"After all," said the Baron, "we must pardon much to men of genius. A delicate organization renders them keenly susceptible to pain and pleasure. And then they idealize every thing; and, in the moonlight of fancy, even the deformity of vice seems beautiful."
"And this you think should be forgiven?"
"At all events it is forgiven. The world loves a spice of wickedness. Talk as you will about principle, impulse is more attractive, even when it goes too far. The passions of youth, like unhooded hawks, fly high, with musical bells upon their jesses; and we forget the cruelty of the sport in the dauntless bearing of the gallant bird."
"And thus doth the world and society corrupt the scholar!" exclaimed Flemming.
Here the Baron rang, and ordered a bottle of Prince Metternich. He then very slowly filled his pipe, and began to smoke. Flemming was lost in a day-dream.
Time has a Doomsday-Book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But, as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters, never to be effaced. These are the high nobility of Nature,—Lords of the Public Domain of Thought. Posterity shall never question their titles. But those, whose fame lives only in the indiscreet opinion of unwise men, must soon be as well forgotten, as if they had never been. To this great oblivion must most men come. It is better, therefore, that they should soon make up their minds to this; well knowing, that, as their bodies must ere long be resolved into dust again, and their graves tell no tales of them; so musttheir names likewise be utterly forgotten, and their most cherished thoughts, purposes, and opinions have no longer an individual being among men; but be resolved and incorporated into the universe of thought. If, then, the imagination can trace the noble dust of heroes, till we find it stopping a beer-barrel, and know that
"Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay,
May stop a hole to keep the wind away;"
not less can it trace the noble thoughts of great men, till it finds them mouldered into the common dust of conversation, and used to stop men's mouths, and patch up theories, to keep out the flaws of opinion. Such, for example, are all popular adages and wise proverbs, which are now resolved into the common mass of thought; their authors forgotten, and having no more an individual being among men.
It is better, therefore, that men should soon make up their minds to be forgotten, and look about them, or within them, for some higher motive, in what they do, than the approbation of men,which is Fame; namely, their duty; that they should be constantly and quietly at work, each in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their fame to take care of itself. Difficult must this indeed be, in our imperfection; impossible perhaps to achieve it wholly. Yet the resolute, the indomitable will of man can achieve much,—at times even this victory over himself; being persuaded, that fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
It has become a common saying, that men of genius are always in advance of their age; which is true. There is something equally true, yet not so common; namely, that, of these men of genius, the best and bravest are in advance not only of their own age, but of every age. As the German prose-poet says, every possible future is behind them. We cannot suppose, that a period of time will ever come, when the world, or any considerable portion of it shall have come up abreast with these great minds, so as fully to comprehend them.
And oh! how majestically they walk in history; some like the sun, with all his travelling glories round him; others wrapped in gloom, yet glorious as a night with stars. Through the else silent darkness of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn footsteps. Onward they pass, like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision of an earthly Paradise, attendant angels bearing golden lights before them, and, above and behind, the whole air painted with seven listed colors, as from the trail of pencils!
And yet, on earth, these men were not happy,—not all happy, in the outward circumstance of their lives. They were in want, and in pain, and familiar with prison-bars, and the damp, weeping walls of dungeons! Oh, I have looked with wonder upon those, who, in sorrow and privation, and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the shadow of death, have worked right on to the accomplishment of their great purposes; toiling much, enduring much, fulfilling much;—and then, with shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung, have laid themselves down in the grave, and slept the sleep of death,—and the world talks of them, while they sleep!
It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings had but sanctified them! As if the death-angel, in passing, had touched them with the hem of his garment, and made them holy! As if the hand of disease had been stretched out over them only to make the sign of the cross upon their souls! And as in the sun's eclipse we can behold the great stars shining in the heavens, so in this life eclipse have these men beheld the lights of the great eternity, burning solemnly and forever!
This was Flemming's reverie. It was broken by the voice of the Baron, suddenly exclaiming;
"An angel is flying over the house!—Here; in this goblet, fragrant as the honey of Hymettus, fragrant as the wild flowers in the Angel's Meadow, I drink to the divinity of thy dreams."
"This is all sunshine," said Flemming, as he drank. "The wine of the Prince, and the Prince of wines. By the way, did you ever read that brilliant Italian dithyrambic, Redi's Bacchus inTuscany? an ode which seems to have been poured out of the author's soul, as from a golden pitcher,
`Filled with the wine
Of the vine
Benign,
That flames so red in Sansavine.'
He calls the Montepulciano the king of all wines."
"Prince Metternich," said the Baron, "is greater than any king in Italy; and I wonder, that this precious wine has never inspired a German poet to write a Bacchus on the Rhine. Many little songs we have on this theme, but none very extraordinary. The best are Max Schenkendorf's Song of the Rhine, and the Song of Rhine Wine, by Claudius, a poet who never drank Rhenish without sugar. We will drink for him a blessing on the Rhine."
And again the crystal lips of the goblets kissed each other, with a musical chime, as of evening bells at vintage-time from the villages on the Rhine. Of a truth, I do not much wonder, that the Germanpoet Schiller loved to write by candle-light with a bottle of Rhine-wine upon the table. Nor do I wonder at the worthy schoolmaster Roger Ascham, when he says, in one of his letters from Germany to Mr. John Raven, of John's College; `Tell Mr. Maden I will drink with him now a carouse of wine; and would to God he had a vessel of Rhenish wine; and perchance, when I come to Cambridge, I will so provide here, that every year I will have a little piece of Rhenish wine.' Nor, in fine, do I wonder at the German Emperor of whom he speaks in another letter to the same John Raven, and says, `The Emperor drank the best that I ever saw; he had his head in the glass five times as long as any of us, and never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish wine.' These were scholars and gentlemen.
"But to resume our old theme of scholars and their whereabout," said the Baron, with an unusual glow, caught no doubt from the golden sunshine, imprisoned, like the student Anselmus, in the glass bottle; "where should the scholar live? In solitudeor in society? In the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart of nature beat, or in the dark, gray city, where he can hear and feel the throbbing heart of man? I will make answer for him, and say, in the dark, gray city. Oh, they do greatly err, who think, that the stars are all the poetry which cities have; and therefore that the poet's only dwelling should be in sylvan solitudes, under the green roof of trees. Beautiful, no doubt, are all the forms of Nature, when transfigured by the miraculous power of poetry; hamlets and harvest-fields, and nut-brown waters, flowing ever under the forest, vast and shadowy, with all the sights and sounds of rural life. But after all, what are these but the decorations and painted scenery in the great theatre of human life? What are they but the coarse materials of the poet's song? Glorious indeed is the world of God around us, but more glorious the world of God within us. There lies the Land of Song; there lies the poet's native land. The river of life, that flows through streets tumultuous, bearingalong so many gallant hearts, so many wrecks of humanity;—the many homes and households, each a little world in itself, revolving round its fireside, as a central sun; all forms of human joy and suffering, brought into that narrow compass; —and to be in this and be a part of this; acting, thinking, rejoicing, sorrowing, with his fellow-men; —such, such should be the poet's life. If he would describe the world, he should live in the world. The mind of the scholar, also, if you would have it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds. It is better that his armour should be somewhat bruised even by rude encounters, than hang forever rusting on the wall. Nor will his themes be few or trivial, because apparently shut in between the walls of houses, and having merely the decorations of street scenery. A ruined character is as picturesque as a ruined castle. There are dark abysses and yawning gulfs in the human heart, which can be rendered passable only by bridging them over with iron nerves and sinews, as Challey bridged the Savine in Switzerland, and Telford the sea between Anglesea and England, with chain bridges. These are the great themes of human thought; not green grass, and flowers, and moonshine. Besides, the mere external forms of Nature we make our own, and carry with us into the city, by the power of memory."
"I fear, however," interrupted Flemming, "that in cities the soul of man grows proud. He needs at times to be sent forth, like the Assyrian monarch, into green fields, `a wonderous wretch and weedless,' to eat green herbs, and be wakened and chastised by the rain-shower and winter's bitter weather. Moreover, in cities there is danger of the soul's becoming wed to pleasure, and forgetful of its high vocation. There have been souls dedicated to heaven from childhood and guarded by good angels as sweet seclusions for holy thoughts, and prayers, and all good purposes; wherein pious wishes dwelt like nuns, and every image was a saint; and yet in life's vicissitudes, by the treachery of occasion, by the thronging passionsof great cities, have become soiled and sinful. They resemble those convents on the river Rhine, which have been changed to taverns; from whose chambers the pious inmates have long departed, and in whose cloisters the footsteps of travellers have effaced the images of buried saints, and whose walls are written over with ribaldry and the names of strangers, and resound no more with holy hymns, but with revelry and loud voices."
"Both town and country have their dangers," said the Baron; "and therefore, wherever the scholar lives, he must never forget his high vocation. Other artists give themselves up wholly to the study of their art. It becomes with them almost religion. For the most part, and in their youth, at least, they dwell in lands, where the whole atmosphere of the soul is beauty; laden with it as the air may be with vapor, till their very nature is saturated with the genius of their art. Such, for example, is the artist's life in Italy."
"I agree with you," exclaimed Flemming; "and such should be the Poet's everywhere; forhe has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world,—and the glories of a modern one,—his Apollo and Transfiguration. He must neither forget nor undervalue his vocation; but thank God that he is a poet; and everywhere be true to himself, and to `the vision and the faculty divine' he feels within him."
"But, at any rate, a city life is most eventful," continued the Baron. "The men who make, or take, the lives of poets and scholars, always complain that these lives are barren of incidents. Hardly a literary biography begins without some such apology, unwisely made. I confess, however, that it is not made without some show of truth; if, by incidents, we mean only those startling events, which suddenly turn aside the stream of Time, and change the world's history in an hour. There is certainly a uniformity, pleasing or unpleasing, in literary life, which for the most part makes to-day seem twin-born with yesterday. But if, byincidents, you mean events in the history of the human mind, (and why not?) noiseless events, that do not scar the forehead of the world as battles do, yet change it not the less, then surely the lives of literary men are most eventful. The complaint and the apology are both foolish. I do not see why a successful book is not as great an event as a successful campaign; only different in kind, and not easily compared."
"Indeed," interrupted Flemming, "in no sense is the complaint strictly true, though at times apparently so. Events enough there are, were they all set down. A life, that is worth writing at all, is worth writing minutely. Besides, all literary men have not lived in silence and solitude;—not all in stillness, not all in shadow. For many have lived in troubled times, in the rude and adverse fortunes of the state and age, and could say with Wallenstein,
`Our life was but a battle and a march;
And, like the wind's blast, never-resting, homeless,
We stormed across the war convulsed earth.'
Of such examples history has recorded many; Dante, Cervantes, Byron, and others; men of iron; men who have dared to breast the strong breath of public opinion, and, like spectre-ships, come sailing right against the wind. Others have been puffed out by the first adverse wind that blew; disgraced and sorrowful, because they could not please others. Truly `the tears live in an onion, that should water such a sorrow.' Had they been men, they would have made these disappointments their best friends, and learned from them the needful lesson of self-reliance."
"To confess the truth," added the Baron, "the lives of literary men, with their hopes and disappointments, and quarrels and calamities, present a melancholy picture of man's strength and weakness. On that very account the scholar can make them profitable for encouragement,—consolation, —warning."
"And after all," continued Flemming, "perhaps the greatest lesson, which the lives of literary men teach us, is told in a single word; Wait!—Every man must patiently bide his time. He must wait. More particularly in lands, like my native land, where the pulse of life beats with such feverish and impatient throbs, is the lesson needful. Our national character wants the dignity of repose. We seem to live in the midst of a battle,—there is such a din,—such a hurrying to and fro. In the streets of a crowded city it is difficult to walk slowly. You feel the rushing of the crowd, and rush with it onward. In the press of our life it is difficult to be calm. In this stress of wind and tide, all professions seem to drag their anchors, and are swept out into the main. The voices of the Present say, Come! But the voices of the Past say, Wait! With calm and solemn footsteps the rising tide bears against the rushing torrent up stream, and pushes back the hurrying waters. With no less calm and solemn footsteps, nor less certainly, does a great mind bear up against public opinion, and push back its hurrying stream. Therefore should every man wait;—should bide his time. Not in listless idleness,—not in uselesspastime,—not in querulous dejection; but in constant, steady, cheerful endeavours, always willing and fulfilling, and accomplishing his task, that, when the occasion comes, he may be equal to the occasion. And if it never comes, what matters it? What matters it to the world whether I, or you, or another man did such a deed, or wrote such a book, sobeit the deed and book were well done! It is the part of an indiscreet and troublesome ambition, to care too much about fame,— about what the world says of us. To be always looking into the faces of others for approval;— to be always anxious for the effect of what we do and say; to be always shouting to hear the echo of our own voices! If you look about you, you will see men, who are wearing life away in feverish anxiety of fame, and the last we shall ever hear of them will be the funeral bell, that tolls them to their early graves! Unhappy men, and unsuccessful! because their purpose is, not to accomplish well their task, but to clutch the `trick and fantasy of fame'; and they go to their graveswith purposes unaccomplished and wishes unfulfilled. Better for them, and for the world in their example, had they known how to wait! Believe me, the talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well; and doing well whatever you do,—without a thought of fame. If it come at all, it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after. And, moreover, there will be no misgivings,—no disappointment,—no hasty, feverish, exhausting excitement."
Thus endeth the First Book of Hyperion. I make no record of the winter. Paul Flemming buried himself in books; in old, dusty books. He studied diligently the ancient poetic lore of Germany, from Frankish Legends of Saint George, and Saxon Rhyme-Chronicles, down through Nibelungen Lieds, and Helden-Buchs, and Songs of the Minnesingers and Mastersingers, and Ships of Fools, and Reinecke Foxes, and Death-Dancesand Lamentations of Damned Souls, into the bright, sunny land of harvests, where, amid the golden grain and the blue corn-flowers, walk the modern bards, and sing.
"Something the heart must have to cherish,
Must love, and joy, and sorrow learn;
Something with passion clasp, or perish,
And in itself to ashes burn."
It was a sweet carol, which the Rhodian children sang of old in Spring, bearing in their hands, from door to door, a swallow, as herald of the season;
"The Swallow is come!
The Swallow is come!
O fair are the seasons, and light
Are the days that she brings,
With her dusky wings,
And her bosom snowy white."
A pretty carol, too, is that, which the Hungarian boys, on the islands of the Danube, sing to the returning stork in Spring;
"Stork! Stork! poor Stork!
Why is thy foot so bloody?
A Turkish boy hath torn it;
Hungarian boy will heal it,
With fiddle, fife, and drum."
But what child has a heart to sing in this capricious clime of ours, where Spring comes sailing in from the sea, with wet and heavy cloud-sails, and the misty pennon of the East-wind nailed to the mast! Yet even here, and in the stormy month of March even, there are bright, warm mornings, when we open our windows to inhale the balmy air. The pigeons fly to and fro, and we hear the whirring sound of wings. Old flies crawl out of the cracks, to sun themselves; and think it is summer. They die in their conceit; and so do our hearts within us, when the cold sea-breath comes from the eastern sea; and again,
"The driving hail
Upon the window beats with icy flail."
The red-flowering maple is first in blossom, its beautiful purple flowers unfolding a fortnight before the leaves. The moose-wood follows, with rose-colored buds and leaves; and the dog-wood, robed in the white of its own pure blossoms. Thencomes the sudden rain-storm; and the birds fly to and fro, and shriek. Where do they hide themselves in such storms? at what firesides dry their feathery cloaks? At the fireside of the great, hospitable sun, to-morrow, not before;—they must sit in wet garments until then.
In all climates Spring is beautiful. In the South it is intoxicating, and sets a poet beside himself. The birds begin to sing;—they utter a few rapturous notes, and then wait for an answer in the silent woods. Those green-coated musicians, the frogs, make holiday in the neighbouring marshes. They, too, belong to the orchestra of Nature; whose vast theatre is again opened, though the doors have been so long bolted with icicles, and the scenery hung with snow and frost, like cobwebs. This is the prelude, which announces the rising of the broad green curtain. Already the grass shoots forth. The waters leap with thrilling pulse through the veins of the earth; the sap through the veins of the plants and trees; and the blood through the veins of man. What a thrill of delight in spring-time!What a joy in being and moving! Men are at work in gardens; and in the air there is an odor of the fresh earth. The leaf-buds begin to swell and blush. The white blossoms of the cherry hang upon the boughs like snow-flakes; and ere long our next-door neighbours will be completely hidden from us by the dense green foliage. The May-flowers open their soft blue eyes. Children are let loose in the fields and gardens. They hold butter-cups under each others' chins, to see if they love butter. And the little girls adorn themselves with chains and curls of dandelions; pull out the yellow leaves to see if the schoolboy loves them, and blow the down from the leafless stalk, to find out if their mothers want them at home.
And at night so cloudless and so still! Not a voice of living thing,—not a whisper of leaf or waving bough,—not a breath of wind,—not a sound upon the earth nor in the air! And overhead bends the blue sky, dewy and soft, and radiant with innumerable stars, like the inverted bellof some blue flower, sprinkled with golden dust, and breathing fragrance. Or if the heavens are overcast, it is no wild storm of wind and rain; but clouds that melt and fall in showers. One does not wish to sleep; but lies awake to hear the pleasant sound of the dropping rain.
It was thus the Spring began in Heidelberg.
"And what think you of Tiedge's Urania," said the Baron smiling, as Paul Flemming closed the book, and laid it upon the table.
"I think," said Flemming, "that it is very much like Jean Paul's grandfather,—in the highest degree poor and pious."
"Bravo!" exclaimed the Baron. "That is the best criticism I have heard upon the book. For my part, I dislike the thing as much as Goethe did. It was once very popular, and lay about in every parlour and bed-room. This annoyed the old gentleman exceedingly; and I do not wonder at it. He complains, that at one time nothing was sung or said but this Urania. He believed in Immortality; but wished to cherish his belief inquietness. He once told a friend of his, that he had, however, learned one thing from all this talk about Tiedge and his Urania; which was, that the saints, as well as the nobility, constitute an aristocracy. He said he found stupid women, who were proud because they believed in Immortality with Tiedge, and had to submit himself to not a few mysterious catechizings and tea-table lectures on this point; and that he cut them short by saying, that he had no objection whatever to enter into another state of existence hereafter, but prayed only that he might be spared the honor of meeting any of those there, who had believed in it here; for, if he did, the saints would flock around him on all sides, exclaiming, Were we not in the right? Did we not tell you so? Has it not all turned out just as we said? And, with such a conceited clatter in his ears, he thought that, before the end of six months, he might die of ennui in Heaven itself."
"How shocked the good old ladies must have been," said Flemming.
"No doubt, their nerves suffered a little; but the young ladies loved him all the better for being witty and wicked; and thought if they could only marry him, how they would reform him."
"Bettina Brentano, for instance."
"O no! That happened long afterwards. Goethe was then a silver-haired old man of sixty. She had never seen him, and knew him only by his writings; a romantic girl of seventeen."
"And yet much in love with the Sexagenarian. And surely a more wild, fantastic, and, excuse me, German passion never sprang up in woman's breast. She was a flower, that worshipped the sun."
"She afterwards married Achim von Arnim, and is now a widow. And not the least singular part of the affair, is, that, having grown older, and I hope colder, she should herself publish the letters which passed between her and Goethe."
"Particularly the letter in which she describes her first visit to Weimar, and her interview with the hitherto invisible divinity of her dreams. The old gentleman took her upon his knees, and she fell asleep with her head upon his shoulder. It reminds me of Titania and Nick Bottom, begging your pardon, always, for comparing your All-sided-One to Nick Bottom. Oberon must have touched her eyes with the juice of Love-in-idleness. However, this book of Goethe's Correspondence with a Child is a very singular and valuable revelation of the feelings, which he excited in female hearts. You say she afterwards married Achim von Arnim?"
"Yes; and he and her brother, Clemens Brentano, published that wondrous book, the Boy's Wonder-Horn."
"The Boy's Wonder-Horn!" said Flemming, after a short pause, for the name seemed to have thrown him into a reverie;—"I know the book almost by heart. Of all your German books it is the one which produces upon my imagination the most wild and magic influence. I have a passion for ballads!"
"And who has not?" said the Baron with asmile. "They are the gypsy-children of song, born under green hedgerows, in the leafy lanes and by-paths of literature,—in the genial summer-time."
"Why do you say summer-time and not summer?" inquired Flemming. "The expression reminds me of your old Minnesingers;—of Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and Walter von der Vogelweide, and Count Kraft von Toggenburg, and your own ancestor, I dare say, Burkhart von Hohenfels. They were always singing of the gentle summer-time. They seem to have lived poetry, as well as sung it; like the birds who make their marriage beds in the voluptuous trees."
"Is that from Shakspere?"
"No; from Lope de Vega."
"You are deeply read in the lore of antiquity, and the Aubades and Watch-Songs of the old Minnesingers. What do you think of the shoe-maker poets that came after them,—with their guilds and singing-schools? It makes me laugh to think how the great German Helicon, shrunk toa rivulet, goes bubbling and gurgling over the pebbly names of Zwinger, Wurgendrussel, Buchenlin, Hellfire, Old Stoll, Young Stoll, Strong Bopp, Dang Brotscheim, Batt Spiegel, Peter Pfort, and Martin Gumpel. And then the Corporation of the Twelve Wise Masters, with their stumpfereime and klingende-reime, and their Hans Tindeisen's rosemary-weise; and Joseph Schmierer's flowery-paradise-weise, and Frauenlob's yellow-weise, and blue-weise, and frog-weise, and looking-glass-weise!"
"O, I entreat you," exclaimed Flemming, laughing, "do not call those men poets! You transport me to quaint old Nuremberg, and I see Hans Sachs making shoes, and Hans Folz shaving the burgomaster."
"By the way," interrupted the Baron, "did you ever read Hoffmann's beautiful story of Master Martin, the Cooper of Nuremberg? I will read it to you this very night. It is the most delightful picture of that age, which you can conceive. But look! the sun has already set behindthe Alsatian hills. Let us go up to the castle and look for the ghost in Prince Ruprecht's tower. O, what a glorious sunset!"
Flemming looked at the evening sky, and a shade of sadness stole over his countenance. He told not to his friend the sorrow, with which his heart was heavy; but kept it for himself alone. He knew that the time, which comes to all men,—the time to suffer and be silent,—had come to him likewise; and he spake no word. O well has it been said, that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak.
"There sits the old Frau Himmelhahn, perched up in her owl-tower," said the Baron to Flemming, as they passed along the Hauptstrasse. "She looks down through her round-eyed spectacles from her nest up there, and watches every one that goes by. I wonder what mischief she is hatching now? Do you know she has nearly ruined your character in town? She says you have a rakish look, because you carry a cane, and your hair curls. Your gloves, also, are a shade too light for a strictly virtuous man."
"It is very kind in her to take such good care of my character, particularly as I am a stranger in town. She is doubtless learned in the Clothes-Philosophy."
"And ignorant of every thing else. She asked a friend of mine the other day, whether Christ was a Catholic or a Protestant."
"That is really too absurd!"
"Not too absurd to be true. And, ignorant as she is, she contrives to do a good deal of mischief in the course of the year. Why, the ladies already call you Wilhelm Meister."
"They are at liberty to call me what they please. But you, who know me better, know that I am something more than they would imply by the name."
"She says, moreover, that the American ladies sit with their feet out of the window, and have no pocket-handkerchiefs."
"Excellent!"
They crossed the market-place and went up beneath the grand terrace into the court-yard of the castle.
"Let us go up and sit under the great linden-trees, that grow on the summit of the Rent Tower," said Flemming. "From that point as from awatch-tower we can look down into the garden, and see the crowd below us."
"And amuse ourselves, as old Frau Himmelhahn does, at her window in the Hauptstrasse," added the Baron.
The keeper's daughter unlocked for them the door of the tower, and, climbing the steep stair-case, they seated themselves on a wooden bench under the linden-trees.
"How beautifully these trees overgrow the old tower! And see what a solid mass of masonry lies in the great fosse down there, toppled from its base by the explosion of a mine! It is like a rusty helmet cleft in twain, but still crested with towering plumes!"
"And what a motley crowd in the garden! Philisters and Sons of the Muses! And there goes the venerable Thibaut, taking his evening stroll. Do you see him there, with his silver hair flowing over his shoulders, and that friendly face, which has for so many years pored over the Pandects. I assure you, he inspires me with awe.And yet he is a merry old man, and loves his joke, particularly at the expense of Moses and other ancient lawgivers."
Here their attention was diverted by a wild-looking person, who passed with long strides under the archway in the fosse, right beneath them, and disappeared among the bushes. He was ill-dressed,—his hair flying in the wind,—his movements hurried and nervous, and the expression of his broad countenance wild, strange, and earnest.
"Who can that be!" asked Flemming. "He strides away indignantly, like one of Ossian's ghosts?"
"A great philosopher, whose name I have forgotten. Truly a strange owl!"
"He looks like a lion with a hat on."
"He is a mystic, who reads Schubert's History of the Soul, and lives, for the most part, in the clouds of the Middle Ages. To him the spirit-world is still open. He believes in the transmigration of souls; and I dare say is now followingthe spirit of some departed friend, who has taken the form of yonder pigeon."
"What a strange hallucination! He lives, I suppose, in the land of cloud-shadows. And, as St. Thomas Aquinas was said to be lifted up from the ground by the fervor of his prayers, so, no doubt, is he by the fervor of his visions."
"He certainly appears to neglect all sublunary things; and, to judge from certain appearances, since you seem fond of holy similitudes, one would say, that, like St. Serapion the Sindonite, he had but one shirt. Yet what cares he? he lives in that poetic dream-land of his thoughts, and clothes his dream-children in poetry."
"He is a poet, then, as well as a philosopher?"
"Yes; but a poet who never writes a line. There is nothing in nature to which his imagination does not give a poetic hue. But the power to make others see these objects in the same poetic light, is wanting. Still he is a man of fine powers and feelings; for, next to being a greatpoet, is the power of understanding one,—of finding one's-self in him, as we Germans say."
Three figures, dressed in black, now came from one of the green alleys, and stopped on the brink of a little fountain, that was playing among the gay flowers in the garden. The eldest of the three was a lady in that season of life, when the early autumn gives to the summer leaves a warmer glow, yet fades them not. Though the mother of many children, she was still beautiful;—resembling those trees, which blossom in October, when the leaves are changing, and whose fruit and blossom are on the branch at once. At her side was a girl of some sixteen years, who seemed to lean upon her arm for support. Her figure was slight; her countenance beautiful, though deadly white; and her meek eyes like the flower of the night-shade, pale and blue, but sending forth golden rays. They were attended by a tall youth of foreign aspect, who seemed a young Antinous, with a mustache and a nose à la Kosciusko. In other respects a perfect hero of romance.
"Unless mine eyes deceive me," said the Baron, "there is the Frau von Ilmenau, with her pale daughter Emma, and that eternal Polish Count. He is always hovering about them, playing the unhappy exile, merely to excite that poor girl's sympathies; and as wretched as genius and wantonness can make him."
"Why, he is already married, you know," replied Flemming. "And his wife is young and beautiful."
"That does not prevent him from being in love with some one else. That question was decided in the Courts of Love in the Middle Ages. Accordingly he has sent his fair wife to Warsaw. But how pale the poor child looks."
"She has just recovered from severe illness. In the winter, you know, it was thought she would not live from hour to hour."
"And she has hardly recovered from that disease, before she seems threatened with a worse one; namely, a hopeless passion. However, people do not die of love now-a-days."
"Seldom, perhaps," said Flemming. "And yet it is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar. There are faces I can never look upon without emotion. There are names I can never hear spoken without almost starting!"
"But whom have we here?"
"That is the French poet Quinet, with his sweet German wife; one of the most interesting women I ever knew. He is the author of a very wild Mystery, or dramatic prose-poem, in which the Ocean, Mont-Blanc, and the Cathedral of Strassburg have parts to play; and the saints on the stained windows of the minster speak, and the statues and dead kings enact the Dance of Death. It is entitled Ahasuerus, or the Wandering Jew."
"Or, as the Danes would translate it, the Shoemaker of Jerusalem. That would be a still more fantastic title for his fantastic book. You know I am no great admirer of the modern French school of writers. The tales of Paul de Kock, who is,I believe, the most popular of all, seem to me like obscene stories told at dinner-tables, after the ladies have retired. It has been well said of him, that he is not only populaire but populacier; and equally well said of George Sand and Victor Hugo, that their works stand like fortifications, well built and well supplied with warlike munitions; but ineffectual against the Grand Army of God, which marches onward, as if nothing had happened. In surveying a national literature, the point you must start from, is national character. That lets you into many a secret; as, for example, Paul de Kock's popularity. The most prominent trait in the French character, is love of amusement, and excitement; and—"
"I should say, rather, the fear of ennui," interrupted Flemming. "One of their own writers has said with a great deal of truth, that the gentry of France rush into Paris to escape from ennui, as, in the noble days of chivalry, the defenceless inhabitants of the champaign fled into the castles, at theapproach of some plundering knight, or lawless Baron; forsaking the inspired twilight of their native groves, for the luxurious shades of the royal gardens. What do you think of that?"
The Baron replied with a smile;
"There is only one Paris; and out of Paris there is no salvation for decent people."
Thus conversing of many things, sat the two friends under the linden-trees on the Rent Tower, till gradually the crowd disappeared from the garden, and the objects around them grew indistinct, in the fading twilight. Between them and the amber-colored western sky, the dense foliage of the trees looked heavy and hard, as if cast in bronze; and already the evening stars hung like silver lamps in the towering branches of that Tree of Life, brought more than two centuries ago from its primeval Paradise in America, to beautify the gardens of the Palatinate.
"I take a mournful pleasure in gazing at that tree," said Flemming, as they rose to depart. "It stands there so straight and tall, with iron bandsaround its noble trunk and limbs, in silent majesty, or whispering only in its native tongue, and freighting the homeward wind with sighs! It reminds me of some captive monarch of a savage tribe, brought over the vast ocean for a show, and chained in the public market-place of the city, disdainfully silent, or breathing only in melancholy accents a prayer for his native forest, a longing to be free."
"Magnificent!" cried the Baron. "I always experience something of the same feeling when I walk through a conservatory. The luxuriant plants of the tropics,—those illustrious exotics, with their gorgeous, flamingo-colored blossoms, and great, flapping leaves, like elephant's ears,—have a singular working upon my imagination; and remind me of a menagerie and wild-beasts kept in cages. But your illustration is finer;—indeed, a grand figure. Put it down for an epic poem."
On their way homeward, Flemming and the Baron passed through a narrow lane, in which was a well-known Studenten-Kneipe. At the door stood a young man, whom the Baron at once recognised as his friend Von Kleist. He was a student; and universally acknowledged, among his young acquaintance, as a "devilish handsome fellow"; notwithstanding a tremendous scar on his cheek, and a cream-colored mustache, as soft as the silk of Indian corn. In short he was a renowner, and a duellist.
"What are you doing here, Von Kleist?"
"Ah, my dear Baron! Is it you? Come in; come in. You shall see some sport. A Fox-Commerce is on foot, and a regular Beer-Scandal."
"Shall we go in, Flemming?"
"Certainly. I should like to see how these things are managed in Heidelberg. You are a Baron, and I am a stranger. It is of no consequence what you and I do, as the king's fool Angeli said to the poet Bautru, urging him to put on his hat at the royal dinner-table."
William Lilly, the Astrologer, says, in his Autobiography, that, when he was committed to the guard-room in White Hall, he thought himself in hell; for "some were sleeping, others swearing, others smoking tobacco; and in the chimney of the room there were two bushels of broken tobacco-pipes, and almost half a load of ashes." What he would have thought if he had peeped into this Heidelberg Studenten-Kneipe, I know not. He certainly would not have thought himself in heaven; unless it were a Scandinavian heaven. The windows were open; and yet so dense was the atmosphere with the smoke of tobacco, and the fumes of beer, that the tallow candles burnt but dimly. A crowd of students were sitting at three long tables, in the large hall; a medley of fellows,known at German Universities under the cant names of Old-Ones, Mossy-Heads, Princes of Twilight, and Pomatum-Stallions. They were smoking, drinking, singing, screaming, and discussing the great Laws of the Broad-Stone and the Gutter. They had a great deal to say, likewise, about Besens, and Zobels, and Poussades; and, if they had been charged for the noise they made, as travellers used to be, in the old Dutch taverns, they would have had a longer bill to pay for that, than for their beer.
In a large arm-chair, upon the middle table, sat one of those distinguished individuals, known among German students as a Senior, or Leader of a Landsmannschaft. He was booted and spurred, and wore a very small crimson cap, and a very tight blue jacket, and very long hair, and a very dirty shirt. He was President of the night; and, as Flemming entered the hall with the Baron and his friend, striking upon the table with a mighty broadsword, he cried in a loud voice;
"Silentium!"
At the same moment a door at the end of the hall was thrown open, and a procession of newcomers, or Nasty-Foxes, as they are called in the college dialect, entered two by two, looking wild, and green, and foolish. As they came forward, they were obliged to pass under a pair of naked swords, held cross-wise by two Old-Ones, who, with pieces of burnt cork, made an enormous pair of mustaches, on the smooth, rosy cheeks of each, as he passed beneath this arch of triumph. While the procession was entering the hall, the President lifted up his voice again, and began to sing the well-known Fox-song, in the chorus of which all present joined lustily.
What comes there from the hill?
What comes there from the hill?
What comes there from the leathery hill?
Ha! Ha!
Leathery hill!
What comes there from the hill?
It is a postilion!
It is a postilion!
It is a leathery postilion!
Ha! Ha!
Postilion!
It is a postilion!
What brings the postilion?
What brings the postilion?
What brings the leathery postilion?
Ha! Ha!
Postilion!
What brings the postilion?
He bringeth us a Fox!
He bringeth us a Fox!
He bringeth us a leathery Fox!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery Fox!
He bringeth us a Fox!
Your servant, Masters mine!
Your servant, Masters mine!
Your servant, much-honored Masters mine!
Ha! Ha!
Much-honored Masters mine!
Your servant, Masters mine!
How does the Herr Papa?
How does the Herr Papa?
How does the leathery Herr Papa?
Ha! Ha!
Herr Papa!
How does the Herr Papa?
He reads in Cicero!
He reads in Cicero!
He reads in leathery Cicero!
Ha! Ha!
Cicero!
He reads in Cicero!
How does the Frau Mama?
How does the Frau Mama?
How does the leathery Frau Mama?
Ha! Ha!
Frau Mama!
How does the Frau Mama?
She makes the Papa tea!
She makes the Papa tea!
She makes the Papa leathery tea!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery tea!
She makes the Papa tea!
How does the Mamsell Sœur?
How does the Mamsell Sœur?
How does the leathery Mamsell Sœur?
Ha! Ha!
Mamsell Sœur!
How does the Mamsell Sœur?
She knits the Papa stockings!
She knits the Papa stockings!
She knits the Papa leathery stockings!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery stockings!
She knits the Papa stockings!
How does the Herr Rector?
How does the Herr Rector?
How does the leathery Herr Rector?
Ha! Ha!
Herr Rector!
How does the Herr Rector?
He calls the scholar, Boy!
He calls the scholar, Boy!
He calls the scholar, leathery Boy!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery Boy!
He calls the scholar, Boy!
And smokes the Fox tobacco?
And smokes the Fox tobacco?
And smokes the leathery Fox tobacco?
Ha! Ha!
Fox tobacco!
And smokes the Fox tobacco?
A little, Masters mine!
A little, Masters mine!
A little, much-honored Masters mine!
Ha! Ha!
Much-honored Masters mine!
A little, Masters mine!
Then let him fill a pipe!
Then let him fill a pipe!
Then let him fill a leathery pipe!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery pipe!
Then let him fill a pipe!
O Lord! It makes me sick!
O Lord! It makes him sick!
O Lord! It makes me leathery sick!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery sick!
O Lord! It makes me sick!
Then let him throw it off!
Then let him throw it off!
Then let him throw it leathery off!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery off!
Then let him throw it off!
Now I again am well!
Now he again is well!
Now I again am leathery well!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery well!
Now I again am well!
So grows the Fox a Bursch!
So grows the Fox a Bursch!
So grows the leathery Fox a Bursch!
Ha! Ha!
Fox a Bursch!
So grows the Fox a Bursch!
At length the song was finished. Meanwhile large tufts and strips of paper had been twisted into the hair of the Branders, as those are called who have been already one semestre at the University, and then at a given signal were set on fire, and the Branders rode round the table on sticks, amid roars of laughter. When this ceremony was completed, the President rose from his chair, and in a solemn voice pronounced a long discourse, in which old college jokes were mingled with much parental advice to young men on entering life, and the whole was profusely garnished with select passages from the Old Testament. Then they all seated themselves at the table and the heavy beer-drinking set in, as among the Gods and Heroes of the old Northern mythology.
"Brander! Brander!" screamed a youth, whose face was hot and flushed with supper and with beer; "Brander, I say? Thou art a Doctor! No,—a Pope;—thou art a Pope, by—"
These words were addressed to a pale, quiet-looking person, who sat opposite, and was busy in making a wretched, shaved poodle sit on his hind legs in a chair, by his master's side, and hold a short clay pipe in his mouth,—a performance to which the poodle seemed no wise inclined.
"Thou art challenged!" replied the pale Student, turning from his dog, who dropped the pipe from his mouth and leaped under the table.
Seconds were chosen on the spot; and the arms ordered; namely, six mighty goblets, or Bassgläser, filled to the brim with foaming beer. Three were placed before each duellist.
"Take your weapons!" cried one of the seconds, and each of the combatants seized a goblet in his hand.
"Strike!"
And the glasses rang, with a salutation like the crossing of swords.
"Set to!"
Each set the goblet to his lips.
"Out!"
And each poured the contents down his throat, as if he were pouring them through a tunnel into a beer-barrel. The other two glasses followed in quick succession, hardly a long breath drawn between. The pale Student was victorious. He was first to drain the third goblet. He held it for a moment inverted, to let the last drops fall out,and then placing it quietly on the table, looked his antagonist in the face, and said;
"Hit!"
Then, with the greatest coolness, he looked under the table and whistled for his dog. His antagonist stopped midway in his third glass. Every vein in his forehead seemed bursting; his eyes were wild and bloodshot, his hand gradually loosened its hold upon the table, and he sank and rolled together like a sheet of lead. He was drunk.
At this moment a majestic figure came stalking down the table, ghost-like, through the dim, smoky atmosphere. His coat was off, his neck bare, his hair wild, his eyes wide open, and looking right before him, as if he saw some beckoning hand in the air, that others could not see. His left hand was upon his hip, and in his right he held a drawn sword extended, and pointing downward. Regardless of every one, erect, and with a martial stride he marched directly along the centre of the table, crushing glasses and overthrowing bottles at everystep. The students shrunk back at his approach; till at length one more drunk, or more courageous, than the rest, dashed a glass full of beer into his face. A general tumult ensued, and the student with the sword leaped to the floor. It was Von Kleist. He was renowning it. In the midst of the uproar could be distinguished the offensive words;
"Arrogant! Absurd! Impertinent! Dummer Junge!"
Von Kleist went home that night with no less than six duels on his hands. He fought them all out in as many days; and came off with only a gash through his upper lip and another through his right eyelid from a dexterous Suabian Schlaeger.
That night Emma of Ilmenau went to her chamber with a heavy heart, and her dusky eyes were troubled with tears. She was one of those gentle beings, who seem created only to love and to be loved. A shade of melancholy softened her character. She shunned the glare of daylight and of society, and wished to be alone. Like the evening primrose, her heart opened only after sunset; but bloomed through the dark night with sweet fragrance. Her mother, on the contrary, flaunted in the garish light of society. There was no sympathy between them. Their souls never approached, never understood each other, and words were often spoken which wounded deeply. And thereforeEmma of Ilmenau went to her chamber that night with tears in her eyes.
She was followed by her French chamber-maid, Madeleine, a native of Strassburg, who had grown old in the family. In her youth, she had been poor,—and virtuous because she had never been tempted; and, now that she had grown old, and seen no immediate reward for her virtue, as is usual with weak minds, she despaired of Providence, and regretted she had never been tempted. Whilst this unfortunate personage was lighting the wax tapers on the toilet, and drawing the bed-curtains, and tattling about the room, Emma threw herself into an arm-chair, and, crossing her hands in her lap, and letting her head fall upon her bosom, seemed lost in a dream.
"Why have these gentle feelings been given me!" said she in her heart. "Why have I been born with all these warm affections,—these ardent longings after what is good, if they lead only to sorrow and disappointment? I would love some one;—love him once and forever;—devote myselfto him alone,—live for him,—die for him,— exist alone in him! But alas! in all this wide world there is none to love me, as I would be loved,—none whom I may love, as I am capable of loving. How empty, how desolate, seems the world about me! Why has Heaven given me these affections, only to fall and fade!"
Alas! poor child! thou too must learn like others, that the sublime mystery of Providence goes on in silence, and gives no explanation of itself,— no answer to our impatient questionings!
"Bless me, child, what ails you?" exclaimed Madeleine, perceiving that Emma paid no attention to her idle gossip. "When I was of your age—"
"Do not talk to me now, good Madeleine. Leave me, I wish to be alone?"
"Well, here is something," continued the maid, taking a billet from her bosom, "which I hope will enliven you. When I was of your age—"
"Hush! hush!" said Emma, taking the billetfrom the hard hand of Madeleine. "Once more I beg you, leave me! I wish to be alone!"
Madeleine took the lamp and retired slowly, wishing her young mistress many good nights and rosy dreams. Emma broke the seal of the note. As she read, her face became deadly pale, and then, as quick as thought, a crimson blush gleamed on her cheek, and her hands trembled. Tenderness, pity, love, offended pride, the weakness and dignity of woman, were all mingled in her look, changing and passing over her fine countenance like cloud-shadows. She sunk back in her chair, covering her face with her hands, as if she would hide it from herself and Heaven.
"He loves me!" said she to herself; "loves me; and is married to another, whom he loves not! and dares to tell me this! O, never,— never,—never! And yet he is so friendless and alone in this unsympathizing world,—and an exile, and homeless! I can but pity him;—yet I hate him, and will see him no more!"
This short reverie of love and hate was brokenby the sound of a clear, mellow voice, which, in the universal stillness of the hour, seemed almost like the voice of a spirit. It was a voice, without the accompaniment of any instrument, singing those sweet lines of Goethe;
"Under the tree-tops is quiet now!
In all the woodlands hearest thou
Not a sound!
The little birds are asleep in the trees,
Wait! wait! and soon like these,
Sleepest thou!"
Emma knew the voice and started. She rushed to the window to close it. It was a beautiful night, and the stars were shining peacefully over the mountain of All-Saints. The sound of the Neckar was soft and low, and nightingales were singing among the brown shadows of the woods. The large red moon shone, like a ruby, in the horizon's ample ring; and golden threads of light seemed braided together with the rippling current of the river. Tall and spectral stood the white statues on the bridge. The outline of thehills, the castle, the arches of the bridge, and the spires and roofs of the town were as strongly marked as if cut out of pasteboard. Amid this fairy scene, a little boat was floating silently down the stream. Emma closed the window hastily, and drew the curtains close.
"I hate him; and yet I will pray for him," said she, as she laid her weary head upon that pillow, from which, but a few months before, she thought she should never raise it again. "O, that I had died then! I dare not love him, but I will pray for him!"
Sweet child! If the face of the deceiver comes so often between thee and Heaven, I tremble for thy fate! The plant that sprang from Helen's tears destroyed serpents;—would that from thine might spring up heart's-ease;—some plant, at least, to destroy the serpents in thy bosom. Believe me, upon the margin of celestial streams alone, those simples grow, which cure the heartache!
And this the silent stars beheld, looking downfrom heaven, and told it not again. This, likewise, the Frau Himmelhahn beheld, looking from her chamber-window, and was not so discreet as the silent stars.
"There are many things, which, having no corporeal evidence, can be perceived and comprehended only by the discursive energies of reason. Hence the ambiguous nature of matter can be comprehended only by adulterated opinion. Matter is the principle of all bodies, and is stamped with the impression of forms. Fire, air, and water derive their origin and principle from the scalene triangle. But the earth was created from right-angled triangles, of which two of the sides are equal. The sphere and the pyramid contain in themselves the figure of fire; but the octaedron was destined to be the figure of air, and the icosaedron of water. The right-angled isosceles triangle produces from itself a square, andthe square generates from itself the cube, which is the figure peculiar to earth. But the figure of a beautiful and perfect sphere was imparted to the most beautiful and perfect world, that it might be indigent of nothing, but contain all things, embracing and comprehending them in itself, and thus might be excellent and admirable, similar to and in concord with itself, ever moving musically and melodiously. If I use a novel language, excuse me. As Apuleius says, pardon must be granted to novelty of words, when it serves to illustrate the obscurity of things."
These words came from the lips of the lion-like philosopher, who has been noticed before in these pages. He was sitting with Flemming, smoking a long pipe. As the Baron said, he was indeed a strange owl; for the owl is a grave bird; a monk, who chants midnight mass in the great temple of Nature;—an anchorite,—a pillar saint,—the very Simeon Stylites of his neighbourhood. Such, likewise, was the philosophical Professor. Solitary, but with a mighty current, flowed the river of his life, like the Nile, without a tributary stream, and making fertile only a single strip in the vast desert. His temperament had been in youth a joyous one; and now, amid all his sorrows and privations, for he had many, he looked upon the world as a glad, bright, glorious world. On the many joys of life he gazed still with the eyes of childhood, from the far-gone Past upward, trusting, hoping;—and upon its sorrows with the eyes of age, from the distant Future, downward, triumphant, not despairing. He loved solitude, and silence, and candle-light, and the deep midnight. "For," said he, "if the morning hours are the wings of the day, I only fold them about me to sleep more sweetly; knowing that, at its other extremity, the day, like the fowls of the air, has an epicurean morsel,—a parson's nose; and on this oily midnight my spirit revels and is glad."
Such was the Professor, who had been talking in a half-intelligible strain for two hours or more.The Baron had fallen fast asleep in his chair; but Flemming sat listening with excited imagination, and the Professor continued in the following words, which, to the best of his listener's memory, seemed gleaned here and there from Fichte's Destiny of Man, and Shubert's History of the Soul.
"Life is one, and universal; its forms many and individual. Throughout this beautiful and wonderful creation there is never-ceasing motion, without rest by night or day, ever weaving to and fro. Swifter than a weaver's shuttle it flies from Birth to Death, from Death to Birth; from the beginning seeks the end, and finds it not, for the seeming end is only a dim beginning of a new out-going and endeavour after the end. As the ice upon the mountain, when the warm breath of the summer sun breathes upon it, melts, and divides into drops, each of which reflects an image of the sun; so life, in the smile of God's love, divides itself into separate forms, each bearing in it and reflecting an image of God's love. Of all these forms the highest and most perfect inits god-likeness is the human soul. The vast cathedral of Nature is full of holy scriptures, and shapes of deep, mysterious meaning; but all is solitary and silent there; no bending knee, no uplifted eye, no lip adoring, praying. Into this vast cathedral comes the human soul, seeking its Creator; and the universal silence is changed to sound, and the sound is harmonious, and has a meaning, and is comprehended and felt. It was an ancient saying of the Persians, that the waters rush from the mountains and hurry forth into all the lands to find the Lord of the Earth; and the flame of the Fire, when it awakes, gazes no more upon the ground, but mounts heavenward to seek the Lord of Heaven; and here and there the Earth has built the great watch-towers of the mountains, and they lift their heads far up into the sky, and gaze ever upward and around, to see if the Judge of the World comes not! Thus in Nature herself, without man, there lies a waiting, and hoping, a looking and yearning, after an unknown somewhat. Yes; when, above there, where the mountain lifts its head over all others, that it may be alone with the clouds and storms of heaven, the lonely eagle looks forth into the gray dawn, to see if the day comes not! when, by the mountain torrent, the brooding raven listens to hear if the chamois is returning from his nightly pasture in the valley; and when the soon uprising sun calls out the spicy odors of the thousand flowers, the Alpine flowers, with heaven's deep blue and the blush of sunset on their leaves;— then there awakes in Nature, and the soul of man can see and comprehend it, an expectation and a longing for a future revelation of God's majesty. It awakens, also, when in the fulness of life, field and forest rest at noon, and through the stillness is heard only the song of the grasshopper and the hum of the bee; and when at evening the singing lark, up from the sweet-smelling vineyards rises, or in the later hours of night Orion puts on his shining armour, to walk forth in the fields of heaven. But in the soul of man alone is this longing changed to certainty and fulfilled. For lo! thelight of the sun and the stars shines through the air, and is nowhere visible and seen; the planets hasten with more than the speed of the storm through infinite space, and their footsteps are not heard, but where the sunlight strikes the firm surface of the planets, where the stormwind smites the wall of the mountain cliff, there is the one seen and the other heard. Thus is the glory of God made visible, and may be seen, where in the soul of man it meets its likeness changeless and firm-standing. Thus, then, stands Man;—a mountain on the boundary between two worlds;— its foot in one, its summit far-rising into the other. From this summit the manifold landscape of life is visible, the way of the Past and Perishable, which we have left behind us; and, as we evermore ascend, bright glimpses of the daybreak of Eternity beyond us!"
Flemming would fain have interrupted this discourse at times, to answer and inquire, but the Professor went on, warming and glowing more andmore. At length, there was a short pause, and Flemming said;
"All these indefinite longings,—these yearnings after an unknown somewhat, I have felt and still feel within me; but not yet their fulfilment."
"That is because you have not faith;" answered the Professor. "The Present is an age of doubt and disbelief, and darkness; out of which shall arise a clear and bright Hereafter. In the second part of Goethe's Faust, there is a grand and striking scene, where in the classical Walpurgis Night, on the Pharsalian Plains, the mocking Mephistopheles sits down between the solemn antique Sphinxes, and boldly questions them, and reads their riddles. The red light of innumerable watch-fires glares all round about, and shines upon the terrible face of the arch-scoffer; while on either side, severe, majestic, solemnly serene, we behold the gigantic forms of the children of Chimæra, half buried in the earth, their mild eyes gazing fixedly, as if they heard through the midnight, the swift-rushing wings of the Stymphalides,striving to outstrip the speed of Alcides' arrows! Angry griffins are near them; and not far are Sirens, singing their wondrous songs from the rocking branches of the willow trees! Even thus does a scoffing and unbelieving Present sit down, between an unknown Future and a too believing Past, and question and challenge the gigantic forms of faith, half buried in the sands of Time, and gazing forward steadfastly into the night, whilst sounds of anger and voices of delight alternate vex and soothe the ear of man!—But the time will come, when the soul of man shall return again childlike and trustful to its faith in God; and look God in the face and die; for it is an old saying, full of deep, mysterious meaning, that he must die, who hath looked upon a God. And this is the fate of the soul, that it should die continually. No sooner here on earth does it awake to its peculiar being, than it struggles to behold and comprehend the Spirit of Life. In the first dim twilight of its existence, it beholds this spirit, is pervaded by its energies,—is quick and creative likethe spirit itself, and yet slumbers away into death after having seen it. But the image it has seen, remains, in the eternal procreation, as a homogeneal existence, is again renewed, and the seeming death, from moment to moment, becomes the source of kind after kind of existences in ever-ascending series. The soul aspires ever onward to love and to behold. It sees the image more perfect in the brightening twilight of the dawn, in the ever higher-rising sun. It sleeps again, dying in the clearer vision; but the image seen remains as a permanent kind; and the slumberer awakes anew and ever higher after its own image, till at length, in the full blaze of noonday, a being comes forth, which, like the eagle, can behold the sun and die not. Then both live on, even when this bodily element, the mist and vapor through which the young eagle gazed, dissolves and falls to earth."
"I am not sure that I understand you," said Flemming; "but if I do, you mean to say, that, as the body continually changes and takes unto itselfnew properties, and is not the same to-day as yesterday, so likewise the soul lays aside its idiosyncrasies, and is changed by acquiring new powers, and thus may be said to die. And hence, properly speaking, the soul lives always in the Present, and has, and can have, no Future; for the Future becomes the Present, and the soul that then lives in me is a higher and more perfect soul; and so onward forevermore."
"I mean what I say," continued the Professor; "and can find no more appropriate language to express my meaning than that which I have used. But as I said before, pardon must be granted to the novelty of words, when it serves to illustrate the obscurity of things. And I think you will see clearly from what I have said, that this earthly life, when seen hereafter from heaven, will seem like an hour passed long ago, and dimly remembered; —that long, laborious, full of joys and sorrows as it is, it will then have dwindled down to a mere point, hardly visible to the far-reaching ken of the disembodied spirit. But the spirit itself soars onward. And thus death is neither an end nor a beginning. It is a transition not from one existence to another, but from one state of existence to another. No link is broken in the chain of being; any more than in passing from infancy to manhood, from manhood to old age. There are seasons of reverie and deep abstraction, which seem to me analogous to death. The soul gradually loses its consciousness of what is passing around it; and takes no longer cognizance of objects which are near. It seems for the moment to have dissolved its connexion with the body. It has passed as it were into another state of being. It lives in another world. It has flown over lands and seas; and holds communion with those it loves, in distant regions of the earth, and the more distant heaven. It sees familiar faces, and hears beloved voices, which to the bodily senses are no longer visible and audible. And this likewise is death; save that when we die, the soul returns no more to the dwelling it has left."
"You seem to take it for granted," interruptedFlemming, "that, in our reveries, the soul really goes out of the body into distant places, instead of summoning up their semblance within itself by the power of memory and imagination!"
"Something I must take for granted," replied the Professor. "We will not discuss that point now. I speak not without forethought. Just observe what a glorious thing human life is, when seen in this light; and how glorious man's destiny. I am; thou art; he is! seems but a school-boy's conjugation. But therein lies a great mystery. These words are significant of much. We behold all round about us one vast union, in which no man can labor for himself without laboring at the same time for all others; a glimpse of truth, which by the universal harmony of things becomes an inward benediction, and lifts the soul mightily upward. Still more so, when a man regards himself as a necessary member of this union. The feeling of our dignity and our power grows strong, when we say to ourselves; My being is not objectless and in vain; I am a necessary link in the great chain, which, from the full development of consciousness in the first man, reaches forward into eternity. All the great, and wise, and good among mankind, all the benefactors of the human race, whose names I read in the world's history, and the still greater number of those, whose good deeds have outlived their names,—all those have labored for me. I have entered into their harvest. I walk the green earth, which they inhabited. I tread in their footsteps, from which blessings grow. I can undertake the sublime task, which they once undertook, the task of making our common brotherhood wiser and happier. I can build forward, where they were forced to leave off; and bring nearer to perfection the great edifice which they left uncompleted. And at length I, too, must leave it, and go hence. O, this is the sublimest thought of all! I can never finish the noble task; therefore, so sure as this task is my destiny, I can never cease to work, and consequently never cease to be. What men call death cannot break off this task, which is never-ending; consequently no periodis set to my being, and I am eternal. I lift my head boldly to the threatening mountain peaks, and to the roaring cataract, and to the storm-clouds swimming in the fire-sea overhead and say; I am eternal, and defy your power! Break, break over me! and thou Earth, and thou Heaven, mingle in the wild tumult! and ye Elements foam and rage, and destroy this atom of dust,—this body, which I call mine! My will alone, with its fixed purpose, shall hover brave and triumphant over the ruins of the universe; for I have comprehended my destiny; and it is more durable than ye! It is eternal; and I, who recognise it, I likewise am eternal! Tell me, my friend, have you no faith in this?"
"I have;" answered Flemming, and there was another pause. He then said;
"I have listened to you patiently and without interruption. Now listen to me. You complain of the skepticism of the age. This is one form in which the philosophic spirit of the age presents itself. Let me tell you, that another form, whichit assumes, is that of poetic reverie. Plato of old had dreams like these; and the Mystics of the Middle Ages; and still their disciples walk in the cloud-land and dream-land of this poetic philosophy. Pleasant and cool upon their souls lie the shadows of the trees under which Plato taught. From their whispering leaves comes wafted across the noise of populous centuries a solemn and mysterious sound, which to them is the voice of the Soul of the World. All nature has become spiritualized and transfigured; and, wrapt in beautiful, vague dreams of the real and the ideal, they live in this green world, like the little child in the German tale, who sits by the margin of a woodland lake, and hears the blue heaven and the branches overhead dispute with their reflection in the water, which is the reality and which the image. I willingly confess, that such day-dreams as these appeal strongly to my imagination. Visitants and attendants are they of those lofty souls, which, soaring ever higher and higher, build themselves nests under the very eaves of the stars, forgetful that theycannot live on air, but must descend to earth for food. Yet I recognise them as day-dreams only; as shadows, not substantial things. What I mainly dislike in the New Philosophy, is the cool impertinence with which an old idea, folded in a new garment, looks you in the face and pretends not to know you, though you have been familiar friends from childhood. I remember an English author who, in speaking of your German Philosophies, says very wisely; `Often a proposition of inscrutable and dread aspect, when resolutely grappled with, and torn from its shady den, and its bristling entrenchments of uncouth terminology,—and dragged forth into the open light of day, to be seen by the natural eye and tried by merely human understanding, proves to be a very harmless truth, familiar to us from old, sometimes so familiar as to be a truism. Too frequently the anxious novice is reminded of Dryden in the Battle of the Books; there is a helmet of rusty iron, dark, grim, gigantic; and within it, at the farthest corner, is a head no bigger than a walnut.'—Can you believe, thatthese words ever came from the lips of Carlyle! He has himself taken up the uncouth terminology of late; and many pure, simple minds are much offended at it. They seem to take it as a personal insult. They are angry; and deny the just meed of praise. It is, however, hardly worth while to lose our presence of mind. Let us rather profit as we may, even from this spectacle, and recognise the monarch in his masquerade. For, hooded and wrapped about with that strange and antique garb, there walks a kingly, a most royal soul, even as the Emperor Charles walked amid solemn cloisters under a monk's cowl;—a monarch still in soul. Such things are not new in the history of the world. Ever and anon they sweep over the earth, and blow themselves out soon, and then there is quiet for a season, and the atmosphere of Truth seems more serene. Why would you preach to the wind? Why reason with thunder-showers? Better sit quiet, and see them pass over like a pageant, cloudy, superb, and vast."
The Professor smiled self-complacently, but said not a word. Flemming continued;
"I will add no more than this;—there are many speculations in Literature, Philosophy, and Religion, which, though pleasant to walk in, and lying under the shadow of great names, yet lead to no important result. They resemble rather those roads in the western forests of my native land, which, though broad and pleasant at first, and lying beneath the shadow of great branches, finally dwindle to a squirrel track, and run up a tree!"
The Professor hardly knew whether he should laugh or be offended at this sally; and, laying his hand upon Flemming's arm, he said seriously;
"Believe me, my young friend, the time will come, when you will think more wisely on these things. And with you, I trust, that time will soon come; since it moves more speedily with some than with others. For what is Time? The shadow on the dial,—the striking of the clock,—the running of the sand,—day and night,—summerand winter,—months, years, centuries! These are but arbitrary and outward signs,—the measure of Time, not Time itself! Time is the Life of the Soul. If not this, then tell me what it is?"
The high and animated tone of voice in which the Professor uttered these words aroused the Baron from his sleep; and, not distinctly comprehending what was said, but thinking the Professor asked what time it was, he innocently exclaimed;
"I should think it must be near midnight!"
This somewhat disconcerted the Professor, who took his leave soon afterward. When he was gone the Baron said;
"Excuse me for treating your guest so cavalierly. His transcendentalism annoyed me not a little; and I took refuge in sleep. One would think, to judge by the language of this sect, that they alone saw any beauty in Nature; and, when I hear one of them discourse, I am instantly reminded of Goethe's Baccalaureus, when he exclaims; `The world was not before I created it; Ibrought the sun up out of the sea; with me began the changeful course of the moon; the day decked itself on my account; the earth grew green and blossomed to meet me; at my nod in that first night, the pomp of all the stars developed itself; who but I set you free from all the bonds of Philisterlike, contracting thoughts? I, however, emancipated as my mind assures me I am, gladly pursue my inward light, advance boldly in a transport peculiarly my own, the bright before me, and the dark behind!'—Do you not see a resemblance? O, they might be modest enough to confess, that one straggling ray of light may, by some accident, reach the blind eyes of even us poor, benighted heathens?"
"Alas! how little veneration we have!" said Flemming. "I could not help closing the discussion with a jest. An ill-timed levity often takes me by surprise. On all such occasions I think of a scene at the University, where, in the midst of a grave discussion on the possibility of Absolute Motion, a scholar said he had seen a rock splitopen, from which sprang a toad, who could not be supposed to have any knowledge of the external world, and consequently his motion must have been absolute. The learned Professor, who presided on that occasion, was hardly more startled and astonished, than was our learned Professor, five minutes ago. But come; wind up your watch, and let us go to bed."
"By the way," said the Baron, "did you mind what a curious head he has. There are two crowns upon it."
"That is a sign," replied Flemming, "that he will eat his bread in two kingdoms."
"I think the poor man would be very thankful," said the Baron with a smile, "if he were always sure of eating it in one. He is what the Transcendentalists call a god-intoxicated man; and I advise him, as Sauteul advised Bossuet, to go to Patmos and write a new Apocalypse."
A few days after this the Baron received letters from his sister, telling him, that her physicians had prescribed a few weeks at the Baths of Ems, and urging him to meet her there before the fashionable season.
"Come," said he to Flemming; "make this short journey with me. We will pass a few pleasant days at Ems, and visit the other watering-places of Nassau. It will drive away the melancholy day-dreams that haunt you. Perhaps some future bride is even now waiting for you, with dim presentiments and undefined longings, at the Serpent's Bath."
"Or some widow of Ems, with a cork-leg!" said Flemming, smiling; and then added, in a toneof voice half jest, half earnest, "Certainly; let us go in pursuit of her;—
`Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she,
That shall command my heart and me.
Where'er she lie,
Hidden from mortal eye,
In shady leaves of destiny.' "
They started in the afternoon for Frankfort, pursuing their way slowly along the lovely Bergstrasse, famed throughout Germany for its beauty. They passed the ruined house where Martin Luther lay concealed after the Diet of Worms, and through the village of Handschuhsheimer, as old as the days of King Pepin the Short, —a hamlet, lying under the hills, half-buried in blossoms and green leaves. Close on the right rose the mountains of the mysterious Odenwald; and on the left lay the Neckar, like a steel bow in the meadow. Farther westward, a thin, smoky vapor betrayed the course of the Rhine; beyond which, like a troubled sea, ran the blue, billowyAlsatian hills. Song of birds, and sound of evening bells, and fragrance of sweet blossoms filled the air; and silent and slow sank the broad red sun, half-hidden amid folding clouds.
"We shall not pass the night at Weinheim," said the Baron to the postilion, who had dismounted to walk up the hill, leading to the town. "You may drive to the mill in the Valley of Birkenau."
The postilion seized one of his fat horses by the tail, and swung himself up to his seat again. They rattled through the paved streets of Weinheim, and took no heed of the host of the Golden Eagle, who stood so invitingly at the door of his own inn; and the ruins of Burg Windeck, above there, on its mountain throne, frowned at them for hurrying by, without staying to do him homage.
"The old ruin looks well from the valley," said the Baron; "but let us beware of climbing that steep hill. Most travellers are like children; they must needs touch whatever they behold. They climb up to every old broken tooth of acastle, which they find on their way;—get a toilsome ascent and hot sunshine for their pains, and come down wearied and disappointed. I trust we are wiser."
They crossed the bridge, and turned up the stream, passing under an arch of stone, which serves as a gateway to this enchanted Valley of Birkenau. A cool and lovely valley! shut in by high hills;—shaded by alder-trees and tall poplars, under which rushes the Wechsnitz, a noisy mountain brook, that ever and anon puts its broad shoulder to the wheel of a mill, and shows that it can labor as well as laugh. At one of these mills they stopped for the night.
A mill forms as characteristic a feature in the romantic German landscape, as in the romantic German tale. It is not only a mill, but likewise an ale-house and rural inn; so that the associations it suggests are not of labor only, but also of pleasure. It stands in the narrow defile, with its picturesque, thatched roof; thither throng thepeasants, of a holiday; and there are rustic dances under the trees.
In the twilight of the fast-approaching summer night, the Baron and Flemming walked forth along the borders of the stream. As they heard it, rushing and gushing among the stones and tangled roots, and the great wheel turning in the current, with its never-ceasing plash! plash! it brought to their minds that exquisite, simple song of Goethe, the Youth and the Mill-brook. It was for the moment a nymph, which sang to them in the voice of the waters.
"I am persuaded," said Flemming, "that, in order fully to understand and fell the popular poetry of Germany, one must be familiar with the German landscape. Many sweet little poems are the outbreaks of momentary feelings;—words, to which the song of birds, the rustling of leaves, and the gurgle of cool waters form the appropriate music. Or perhaps I should say they are words, which man has composed to the music of nature. Can you not, even now, hear this brooklet tellingyou how it is on its way to the mill, where at day-break the miller's daughter opens her window, and comes down to bathe her face in its stream, and her bosom is so full and white, that it kindles the glow of love in the cool waters!"
"A most delightful ballad, truly," said the Baron. "But like many others of our little songs, it requires a poet to fell and understand it. Sing them in the valley and woodland shadows, and under the leafy roofs of garden walks, and at night, and alone, as they were written. Sing them not in the loud world,—for the loud world laughs such things to scorn. It is Mueller who says, in that little song, where the maiden bids the moon good evening;
`This song was made to be sung at night,
And he who reads it in broad daylight,
Will never read the mystery right;
And yet it is childlike easy!'
He has written a great many pretty songs, in which the momentary, indefinite longings and impulses of the soul of man find an expression. Hecalls them the songs of a Wandering Horn-player. There is one among them much to our present purpose. He expresses in it, the feeling of unrest and desire of motion, which the sight and sound of running waters often produce in us. It is entitled, `Whither?' and is worth repeating to you.
`I heard a brooklet gushing
From its rocky fountain near,
Down into the valley rushing,
So fresh and wondrous clear.
`I know not what came o'er me,
Nor who the counsel gave;
But I must hasten downward,
All with my pilgrim-stave.
`Downward, and ever farther,
And ever the brook beside;
And ever fresher murmured,
And ever clearer the tide.
`Is this the way I was going?
Whither, O brooklet, say!
Thou hast, with thy soft murmur,
Murmured my senses away.
`What do I say of a murmur?
That can no murmur be;
'T is the water-nymphs, that are singing
Their roundelays under me.
`Let them sing, my friend, let them murmur,
And wander merrily near;
The wheels of a mill are going
In every brooklet clear.' "
"There you have the poetic reverie," said Flemming, "and the dull prose commentary and explanation in matter of fact. The song is pretty; and was probably suggested by some such scene as this, which we are now beholding. Doubtless all your old national traditions sprang up in the popular mind as this song in the poet's."
"Your opinion is certainly correct," answered the Baron; "and yet all this play of poetic fancy does not prevent me from feeling the chill night air, and the pangs of hunger. Let us go back to the mill, and see what our landlady has for supper. Did you observe what a loud, sharp voice she has?"
"People always have, who live in mills, and near water-falls."
On the following morning they emerged unwillingly from the green, dark valley, and journeyed along the level highway to Frankfort, where in the evening they heard the glorious Don Giovanni of Mozart. Of all operas this was Flemming's favorite. What rapturous flights of sound! what thrilling, pathetic chimes! what wild, joyous revelry of passion! what a delirium of sense!—what an expression of agony and woe! all the feelings of suffering and rejoicing humanity sympathized with and finding a voice in those tones. Flemming and the Baron listened with ever-increasing delight.
"How wonderful this is!" exclaimed Flemming, transported by his feelings. "How the chorus swells and dies, like the wind of summer! How those passages of mysterious import seem to wave to and fro, like the swaying branches of trees; from which anon some solitary sweetvoice darts off like a bird, and floats away and revels in the bright, warm sunshine! And then mark! how, amid the chorus of a hundred voices and a hundred instruments,—of flutes, and drums, and trumpets,—this universal shout and whirl-wind of the vexed air, you can so clearly distinguish the melancholy vibration of a single string, touched by the finger,—a mournful, sobbing sound! Ah, this is indeed human life! where in the rushing, noisy crowd, and amid sounds of gladness, and a thousand mingling emotions, distinctly audible to the ear of thought, are the pulsations of some melancholy string of the heart, touched by an invisible hand."
Then came, in the midst of these excited feelings, the ballet; drawing its magic net about the soul. And soon, from the tangled yet harmonious mazes of the dance, came forth a sylph-like form, her scarf floating behind her, as if she were fanning the air with gauze-like wings. Noiseless as a feather or a snow-flake falls, did her feet touch the earth. She seemed to floatin the air, and the floor to bend and wave under her, as a branch, when a bird alights upon it, and takes wing again. Loud and rapturous applause followed each wonderful step, each voluptuous movement; and, with a flushed cheek and burning eye, and bosom panting to be free, stood the gracefully majestic figure for a moment still, and then the winged feet of the swift dancing-girls glanced round her, and she was lost again in the throng.
"How truly exquisite this is!" exclaimed the Baron, after joining loudly in the applause. "What a noble figure! What grace! what attitudes! How much soul in every motion! how much expression in every gesture! I assure you, it produces upon me the same effect as a beautiful poem. It is a poem. Every step is a word; and the whole together a poem!"
The Baron and Flemming were delighted with the scene; and at the same time exceedingly amused with the countenance of an old prude in the next box, who seemed to look upon the wholemagic show, with such feelings as Michal, Saul's daughter, experienced, when she looked from her window and saw King David dancing and leaping with his scanty garments.
"After all," said Flemming, "the old French priest was not so far out of the way, when he said, in his coarse dialect, that the dance is the Devil's procession; and paint and ornaments, the whetting of the devil's sword; and the ring that is made in dancing, the devil's grindstone, whereon he sharpens his sword; and finally, that a ballet is the pomp and mass of the Devil, and whosoever entereth therein, entereth into his pomp and mass; for the woman who singeth is the prioress of the Devil, and they that answer are clerks, and they that look on are parishioners, and the cymbals and flutes are the bells, and the musicians that play are the ministers, of the Devil."
"No doubt this good lady near us, thinks so likewise," answered the Baron laughing; "but she likes it, for all that."
When the play was over the Baron begged Flemming to sit still, till the crowd had gone.
"I have a strange fancy," said he, "whenever I come to the theatre, to see the end of all things. When the crowd is gone, and the curtain raised again to air the house, and the lamps are all out, save here and there one behind the scenes, the contrast with what has gone before is most impressive. Every thing wears a dream-like aspect. The empty boxes and stalls,—the silence,—the smoky twilight, and the magic scene dismantled, produce in me a strange, mysterious feeling. It is like a dim reflection of a theatre in water, or in a dusty mirror; and reminds me of some of Hoffmann's wild Tales. It is a practical moral lesson, —a commentary on the play, and makes the show complete."
It was truly as he said; only tenfold more desolate, solemn, and impressive; and produced upon the mind the effect we experience, when slumber is suddenly broken, and dreams and realities mingle, and we know not yet whether we sleep or wake. As they at length passed out through the dimly-lighted passage, they heard a vulgar-looking fellow, with a sensual face and shaggy whiskers, say to some persons who were standing near him, and seemed to be hangers-on of the play-house;
"I shall run her six nights at Munich, and then take her on to Vienna."
Flemming thought he was speaking of some favorite horse. He was speaking of his beautiful wife, the ballet-dancer.
What most interested our travellers in the ancient city of Frankfort, was neither the opera nor the Ariadne of Dannecker, but the house in which Goethe was born, and the scenes he frequented in his childhood, and remembered in his old age. Such for example are the walks around the city, outside the moat; the bridge over the Maine, with the golden cock on the cross, which the poet beheld and marvelled at when a boy; the cloister of the Barefooted Friars, through which he stole with mysterious awe to sit by the oilcloth-covered table of old Rector Albrecht; and the garden in which his grandfather walked up and down among fruit-trees and rose-bushes, in long morning gown, black velvet cap, and the antique leather gloves, which he annually received as Mayor on Pipers-Doomsday, representing a kind of middle personage between Alcinous and Laertes. Thus, O Genius! are thy foot-prints hallowed; and the star shines forever over the place of thy nativity.
"Your English critics may rail as they list," said the Baron, while he and Flemming were returning from a stroll in the leafy gardens, outside the moat; "but, after all, Goethe was a magnificent old fellow. Only think of his life; his youth of passion, alternately aspiring and desponding, stormy, impetuous, headlong;—his romantic manhood, in which passion assumes the form of strength; assiduous, careful, toiling, without haste, without rest; and his sublime old age,—the age of serene and classic repose, where he stands like Atlas, as Claudian has painted him in the Battle of the Giants, holding the world aloft upon his head, the ocean-streams hard frozen in his hoary locks."
"A good illustration of what the world calls his indifferentism."
"And do you know I rather like this indifferentism? Did you never have the misfortune to live in a community, where a difficulty in the parish seemed to announce the end of the world? or to know one of the benefactors of the human race, in the very `storm and pressure period' of his indiscreet enthusiasm? If you have, I think you will see something beautiful in the calm and dignified attitude which the old philosopher assumes."
"It is a pity, that his admirers had not a little of this philosophic coolness. It amuses me to read the various epithets, which they apply to him; The Dear, dear Man! The Life-enjoying Man! The All-sided One! The Representative of Poetry upon earth! The Many-sided Master-Mind of Germany! His enemies rush into the other extreme, and hurl at him the fierce names of Old Humbug! and Old Heathen! which hit like pistol-bullets."
"I confess, he was no saint."
"No; his philosophy is the old ethnic philosophy. You will find it all in a convenient andconcentrated, portable form in Horace's beautiful Ode to Thaliarcus. What I most object to in the old gentleman is his sensuality."
"O nonsense. Nothing can be purer than the Iphigenia; it is as cold and passionless as a marble statue."
"Very true; but you cannot say the same of some of the Roman Elegies and of that monstrous book the Elective Affinities."
"Ah, my friend, Goethe is an artist; and looks upon all things as objects of art merely. Why should he not be allowed to copy in words what painters and sculptors copy in colors and in marble?"
"The artist shows his character in the choice of his subject. Goethe never sculptured an Apollo, nor painted a Madonna. He gives us only sinful Magdalens and rampant Fauns. He does not so much idealize as realize."
"He only copies nature."
"So did the artists, who made the bronzelamps of Pompeii. Would you hang one of those in your hall? To say that a man is an artist and copies nature is not enough. There are two great schools of art; the imitative and the imaginative. The latter is the most noble, and most enduring; and Goethe belonged rather to the former. Have you read Menzel's attack upon him?"
"It is truly ferocious. The Suabian hews into him lustily. I hope you do not side with him."
"By no means. He goes too far. He blames the poet for not being a politician. He might as well blame him for not being a missionary to the Sandwich Islands."
"And what do you think of Eckermann?"
"I think he is a toady; a kind of German Boswell. Goethe knew he was drawing his portrait, and attitudinized accordingly. He works very hard to make a Saint Peter out of an old Jupiter, as the Catholics did at Rome."
"Well; call him Old Humbug, or Old Heathen, or what you please; I maintain, that, with all his errors and short-comings, he was a glorious specimen of a man."
"He certainly was. Did it ever occur to you that he was in some points like Ben Franklin? a kind of rhymed Ben Franklin? The practical tendency of his mind was the same; his love of science was the same; his benignant, philosophic spirit was the same; and a vast number of his little poetic maxims and sooth-sayings seem nothing more than the worldly wisdom of Poor Richard, versified."
"What most offends me is, that now every German jackass must have a kick at the dead lion."
"And every one who passes through Weimar must throw a book upon his grave, as travellers did of old a stone upon the grave of Manfredi, at Benevento. But, of all that has been said or sung, what most pleases me is Heine's Apologetic, if I may so call it; in which he says, that the minor poets, who flourished under the imperialreign of Goethe `resemble a young forest, where the trees first show their own magnitude after the oak of a hundred years, whose branches had towered above and overshadowed them, has fallen. There was not wanting an opposition, that strove against Goethe, this majestic tree. Men of the most warring opinions united themselves for the contest. The adherents of the old faith, the orthodox, were vexed, that, in the trunk of the vast tree, no niche with its holy image was to be found; nay, that even the naked Dryads of paganism were permitted to play their witchery there; and gladly, with consecrated axe, would they have imitated the holy Boniface, and levelled the enchanted oak to the ground. The followers of the new faith, the apostles of liberalism, were vexed on the other hand, that the tree could not serve as the Tree of Liberty, or, at any rate, as a barricade. In fact the tree was too high; no one could plant the red cap upon its summit, or dance the Carmagnole beneath its branches. The multitude, however, venerated this tree for the veryreason, that it reared itself with such independent grandeur, and so graciously filled the world with its odor, while its branches, streaming magnificently toward heaven, made it appear, as if the stars were only the golden fruit of its wondrous limbs.' Don't you think that beautiful?"
"Yes, very beautiful. And I am glad to see, that you can find something to admire in my favorite author, notwithstanding his frailties; or, to use an old German saying, that you can drive the hens out of the garden without trampling down the beds."
"Here is the old gentleman himself!" exclaimed Flemming.
"Where!" cried the Baron, as if for the moment he expected to see the living figure of the poet walking before them.
"Here at the window,—that full-length cast. Excellent, is it not! He is dressed, as usual, in his long yellow nankeen surtout, with a white cravat crossed in front. What a magnificent head! and what a posture! He stands like a tower ofstrength. And, by Heavens! he was nearly eighty years old, when that was made."
"How do you know?"
"You can see by the date on the pedestal."
"You are right. And yet how erect he stands, with his square shoulders braced back, and his hands behind him. He looks as if he were standing before the fire. I feel tempted to put a live coal into his hand, it lies so invitingly half-open. Gleim's description of him, soon after he went to Weimar, is very different from this. Do you recollect it?"
"No, I do not."
"It is a story, which good old father Gleim used to tell with great delight. He was one evening reading the Göttingen Musen-Almanach in a select society at Weimar, when a young man came in, dressed in a short, green shooting-jacket, booted and spurred, and having a pair of brilliant, black, Italian eyes. He in turn offered to read; but finding probably the poetry of the Musen-Almanach of that year rather too insipid for him,he soon began to improvise the wildest and most fantastic poems imaginable, and in all possible forms and measures, all the while pretending to read from the book. `That is either Goethe or the Devil,' said good old father Gleim to Wieland, who sat near him. To which the `Great I of Osmannstadt' replied; `It is both, for he has the Devil in him to-night; and at such times he is like a wanton colt, that flings out before and behind, and you will do well not to go too near him!' "
"Very good!"
"And now that noble figure is but mould. Only a few months ago, those majestic eyes looked for the last time on the light of a pleasant spring morning. Calm, like a god, the old man sat; and with a smile seemed to bid farewell to the light of day, on which he had gazed for more than eighty years. Books were near him, and the pen which had just dropped, as it were from his dying fingers. `Open the shutters, and let in more light!' were the last words that came from those lips. Slowly stretching forth his hand, he seemed to write inthe air; and, as it sank down again and was motionless, the spirit of the old man departed."
"And yet the world goes on. It is strange how soon, when a great man dies, his place is filled; and so completely, that he seems no longer wanted. But let us step in here. I wish to buy that cast; and send it home to a friend."
After lingering a day or two in Frankfort, the two friends struck across through Hochheim to the Rhine, and then up among the hills of the Rheingau to Schlangenbad, where they tarried only to bathe, and to dine; and then pursued their way to Langenschwalbach. The town lies in a valley, with gently-sloping hills around it, and long avenues of poplars leading forth into the fields. One interminable street cuts the town in twain, and there are old houses with curious faces carved upon their fronts, and dates of the olden time.
Our travellers soon sallied forth from their hotel, impatient to drink the strength-giving watersof the fountains. They continued their walk far up the valley under the poplars. The new grain was waving in the fields; the birds singing in the trees and in the air; and every thing seemed glad, save a poor old man, who came tottering out of the woods, with a heavy bundle of sticks on his shoulders.
Returning upon their steps, they passed down the valley and through the long street to the tumble-down old Lutheran church. A flight of stone steps leads from the street to the green terrace or platform on which the church stands, and which, in ancient times, was the churchyard, or as the Germans more devoutly say, God's-acre; where generations are scattered like seeds, and that which is sown in corruption shall be raised hereafter in incorruption. On the steps stood an old man,— a very old man,—holding a little girl by the hand. He took off his greasy cap as they passed, and wished them good day. His teeth were gone; he could hardly articulate a syllable. The Baron asked him how old the church was. Hegave no answer; but when the question was repeated, came close up to them, and taking off his cap again, turned his ear attentively, and said;
"I am hard of hearing."
"Poor old man," said Flemming; "He is as much a ruin as the church we are entering. It will not be long before he, too, shall be sown as seed in this God's-acre!"
The little girl ran into a house close at hand, and brought out the great key. The church door swung open, and, descending a few steps, they passed through a low-roofed passage into the church. All was in ruin. The gravestones in the pavement were started from their places; the vaults beneath yawned; the roof above was falling piecemeal; there were rents in the old tower; and mysterious passages, and side doors with crazy flights of wooden steps, leading down into the churchyard. Amid all this ruin, one thing only stood erect; it was a statue of a knight in armour, standing in a niche under the pulpit.
"Who is this?" said Flemming to the old sexton; "who is this, that stands here so solemnly in marble, and seems to be keeping guard over the dead men below?"
"I do not know," replied the old man; "but I have heard my grandfather say it was the statue of a great warrior!"
"There is history for you!" exclaimed the Baron. "There is fame! To have a statue of marble, and yet have your name forgotten by the sexton of your parish, who can remember only, that he once heard his grandfather say, that you were a great warrior!"
Flemming made no reply, for he was thinking of the days, when from that old pulpit, some bold reformer thundered down the first tidings of a new doctrine, and the roof echoed with the grand old hymns of Martin Luther.
When he communicated his thoughts to the Baron, the only answer he received was;
"After all, what is the use of so much preaching? Do you think the fishes, that heard the sermon of St. Anthony, were any better than thosewho did not? I commend to your favorable notice the fish-sermon of this saint, as recorded by Abraham à Santa Clara. You will find it in your favorite Wonder-Horn."
Thus passed the day at Langenschwalbach; and the evening at the Allée-Saal was quite solitary; for as yet no company had arrived to fill its chambers, or sit under the trees before the door. The next morning even Flemming and the Baron were gone; for the German's heart was beating with strong desire to embrace his sister; and the heart of his friend cared little whither he went, sobeit he were not too much alone.
After a few hours' drive, they were looking down from the summit of a hill right upon the house-tops of Ems. There it lay, deep sunk in the hollow beneath them, as if some inhabitant of Sirius, like him spoken of in Voltaire's tale of Micromegas, held it in the hollow of his hand. High and peaked rise the hills, that throw their shadows into this romantic valley, and at their base winds the river Lahn. Our travellersdrove through the one long street, composed entirely of hotels and lodging-houses. Sick people looked out of the windows, as they passed. Others were walking leisurely up and down, beneath the few decapitated trees, which represent a public promenade; and a boy, with a blue frock and crimson cap, was driving three donkeys down the street. In short, they were in a fashionable watering-place; as yet sprinkled only by a few pattering drops of the summer rain of strangers, which generally follows the first hot days.
On alighting at the London Hotel, the Baron found—not his sister, but only a letter from her, saying she had changed her mind and gone to the Baths of Franconia. This was a disappointment, which the Baron pocketed with the letter, and said not a word more about either. It was his way; his life-philosophy in small things and great. In the evening, they went to an æsthetic tea, at the house of the Frau Kranich, the wife of a rich banker of Frankfort.
"I must tell you about this Frau Kranich," said the Baron to Flemming, on the way. "She is a woman of talent and beauty, and just in the prime of life. But, unfortunately, very ambitious. Her mania is, to make a figure in the fashionable world; and to this end she married a rich banker of Frankfort, old enough to be her father, not to say her grandfather, hoping, doubtless, that he would soon die; for, if ever a woman wished to be a widow, she is that woman. But the old fellow is tough and won't die. Moreover, he is deaf, and crabbed, and penurious, and half the time bed-ridden. The wife is a model of virtue, notwithstanding her weakness. She nurses the old gentleman as if he were a child. And, to crown all, he hates society, and will not hear of his wife's receiving or going into company."
"How, then, can she give soirées?" asked Flemming.
"I was just going to tell you," continued the Baron. "The gay lady has no taste for long evenings with the old gentleman in the back chamber;—for being thus chained like a criminal underMezentius, face to face with a dead body. So she puts him to bed first, and—"
"Gives him opium."
"Yes, I dare say; and then gives herself a soirée, without his knowing any thing about it. This course of deception is truly hateful in itself, and must be particularly so to her, for she is not a low, or an immoral woman; but one of those who, not having strength enough to complete the sacrifice they have had strength enough to commence, are betrayed into a life of duplicity and falsehood."
They had now reached the house, and were ushered into a room gaily lighted and filled with guests. The hostess came forward to receive them, dressed in white, and sailing down the room like a swan. When the customary salutations had passed and Flemming had been duly presented, the Baron said, not without a certain degree of malice;
"And, my dear Frau Kranich, how is your good husband to night?"
This question was about as discreet as a cannon-ball. But the lady replied in the simplicity of her heart, and not in the least disconcerted;
"The same as ever, my dear Baron. It is astonishing how he holds out. But let us not talk of these things now. I must introduce your friend to his countryman, the Grand Duke of Mississippi; alike remarkable for his wealth, his modesty, and the extreme simplicity of his manners. He drives only six horses. Besides, he is known as a man of learning and piety;—has his private chapel, and private clergyman, who always preaches against the vanity of worldly riches. He has also a private secretary, whose sole duty is to smoke to him, that he may enjoy the aroma of Spanish cigars, without the trouble of smoking."
"Decidedly a man of genius!"
Here Flemming was introduced to his illustrious countryman; a person who seemed to consist chiefly of linen, such a display did he make of collar, bosom, and wristbands.
"Pray, Mr. Flemming, what do you think of that Rembrandt?" said he, pointing to a picture onthe wall. "Exquisite picture! The grandeur of sentiment and splendor of chiaroscuro are of the first order. Just observe the liquidity of the water, and the silveryness of the clouds! Great power! There is a bravura of handling in that picture, Sir, which requires the eye of the connoisseur to appreciate."
"Yes, a most undoubted—copy!"
And here their conversation ended; for at that moment the little Moldavian Prince Jerkin made his way through the crowd, with his snuff-box as usual in his hand, and hurried up to Flemming whom he had known in Heidelberg. He was eager to let every one know that he spoke English, and in his haste began by making a mistake.
"Good bye! Good bye! Mr. Flemming!" said he, instead of good evening. "I am ravished to see you in Ems. Nice place;—all that there is of most nice. I drink my water and am good! Do you not think the Frau Kranich has a very beautiful leather?"
He meant skin. Flemming laughed outright;but it was not perceived by the Prince, because at that moment he was pushed aside, in the rush of a gallopade, and Flemming beheld his face no more. At the same moment the Baron introduced a friend of his, who also spoke English and said;
"You will sup with me to-night. I have some Rhine-wine, which will be a seduction to you."
Soon after, the Baron stood with an impassioned, romantic lady leaning on his arm, examining a copy of Raphael's Fornarina.
"Ach! I wish I had been the Fornarina," sighed the impassioned, romantic lady.
"Then, my dear Madam," replied the Baron, "I wish I had been Raphael."
And so likewise said to himself a very tall man with fiery red hair, and fancy whiskers, who was waltzing round and round in one spot, and in a most extraordinary waistcoat; thus representing a fiery, floating-light, to warn men of the hidden rocks, on which the breath of vanity drives them shipwreck. At length, his partner, tired of spinning, sank upon a sofa, like a child's top, when it reels and falls.
"You do not like the waltz?" said an elderly French gentleman, remarking the expression of Flemming's countenance.
"O yes; among the figurantes of the Opera. But I confess, it sometimes makes me shudder to see a young rake clasp his arms round the waist of a pure and innocent girl. What would you say, were you to see him sitting on a sofa with his arms round your wife?"
"Mere prejudice of education," replied the French gentleman. "I know that situation. I have read all about it in the Bibliothèque de Romans Choisis!"
And merrily went the dance; and bright eyes and flushed cheeks were not wanting among the dancers;
"And they waxed red, and waxed warm,
And rested, panting, arm in arm,"
and the Strauss-walzes sounded pleasantly in the ears of Flemming, who, though he never danced,yet, like Henry of Ofterdingen, in the Romance of Novalis, thought to music. The wheeling waltz set the wheels of his fancy going. And thus the moments glided on, and the footsteps of Time were not heard amid the sound of music and voices.
But suddenly this scene of gayety was interrupted. The door opened wide; and the short figure of a gray-haired old man presented itself, with a flushed countenance and wild eyes. He was but half-dressed, and in his hand held a silver candlestick without a light. A sheet was wound round his head, like a turban; and he tottered forward with a vacant, bewildered look, exclaiming;
"I am Mahomet, the king of the Jews!"
At the same moment he fell in a swoon; and was borne out of the room by the servants. Flemming looked at the lady of the festival, and she was deadly pale. For a moment all was confusion; and the dance and the music stopped. Theimpression produced on the company was at once ludicrous and awful. They tried in vain to rally. The whole society was like a dead body, from which the spirit has departed. Ere long the guests had all dispersed, and left the lady of the mansion to her mournful, expiring lamps, and still more mournful reflections.
"Truly," said Flemming, to the Baron, as they wended their way homeward, "this seems not like reality; but like one of the sharp contrasts we find in novels. Who shall say, after this, that there is not more romance in real life, than we find written in books!"
"Not more romance," said the Baron, "but a different romance."
A still more tragic scene had been that evening enacted in Heidelberg. Just as the sun set, two female figures walked along the romantic woodland path-way, leading to the Angel's Meadow, a little green opening on the brow of one of the high hills, which see themselves in the Neckar and hear the solemn bells of Kloster-Neuburg. The evening shadows were falling broad and long; and the cuckoo began to sing.
"Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" said the eldest of the two figures, repeating an old German popular rhyme,
`Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
Tell me true,
Tell me fair and fine,
How long must I unmarried pine!' "
It was the voice of an evil spirit, that spoke in the person of Madeleine; and the pale and shrinking figure, that walked by her side, and listened to those words, was Emma of Ilmenau. A young man joined them, where the path turns into the thick woodlands; and they disappeared among the shadowy branches. It was the Polish Count.
The forget-me-nots looked up to heaven with their meek blue eyes, from their home in the Angel's Meadow. Calmly stood the mountain of All-Saints, in its majestic, holy stillness;—the river flowed so far below, that the murmur of itswaters was not heard;—there was not a sigh of the evening wind among the leaves,—not a sound upon the earth nor in the air;—and yet that night there fell a star from heaven!
It was now that season of the year, which an old English writer calls the amiable month of June, and at that hour of the day, when, face to face, the rising moon beholds the setting sun. As yet the stars were few in heaven. But, after the heat of the day, the coolness and the twilight descended like a benediction upon the earth, by all those gentle sounds attended, which are the meek companions of the night.
Flemming and the Baron had passed the afternoon at the Castle. They had rambled once more together, and for the last time, over the magnificent ruin. On the morrow they were to part, perhaps forever. The Baron was going to Berlin, to join his sister; and Flemming, drivenforward by the restless spirit within him, longed once more for a change of scene, and was going to the Tyrol and Switzerland. Alas! he never said to the passing hour; "Stay, for thou art fair!" but reached forward into the dark future, with unsatisfied longings and aimless desires, that were never still.
As the day was closing, they sat down on the terrace of Elisabeth's Garden. The sun had set beyond the blue Alsatian hills; and on the valley of the Rhine fell the purple mist, like the mantle of the departing prophet from his fiery chariot. Over the castle walls, and the trees of the garden, rose the large moon; and between the contending daylight and moonlight there were as yet no shadows. But at length the shadows came; transparent and faint outlines, that deepened into form. In the valley below only the river gleamed, like steel; and here and there the lamps were lighted in the town. Solemnly stood the leafy lindentrees in the garden near them, their trunks in darkness and their summits bronzed with moonlight; and in his niche in the great round tower, overhung with ivy, like a majestic phantom, stood the gray statue of Louis, with his venerable beard, and shirt of mail, and flowing mantle; and the mild, majestic countenance looked forth into the silent night, as the countenance of a seer, who reads the stars. At intervals the wind of the summer night passed through the ruined castle and the trees, and they sent forth a sound as if nature were sighing in her dreams; and for a moment overhead the broad leaves gently clashed together, like brazen cymbals, with a tinkling sound; and then all was still, save the sweet, passionate song of nightingales, that nowhere upon earth sing more sweetly than in the gardens of Heidelberg Castle.
The hour, the scene, and the near-approaching separation of the two young friends, had filled their hearts with a pleasant, though at the same time not painless excitement. They had been conversing about the magnificent old ruin, and the ages in which it had been built, and the vicissitudesof time and war, that had battered down its walls, and left it "tenantless, save to the crannying wind."
"How sorrowful and sublime is the face of that statue yonder," said Flemming. "It reminds me of the old Danish hero Beowulf; for careful, sorrowing, he seeth in his son's bower the wine-hall deserted, the resort of the wind, noiseless; the knight sleepeth; the warrior lieth in darkness; there is no noise of the harp, no joy in the dwellings, as there was before."
"Even as you say," replied the Baron; "but it often astonishes me, that, coming from that fresh green world of yours beyond the sea, you should feel so much interest in these old things; nay, at times, seem so to have drunk in their spirit, as really to live in the times of old. For my part, I do not see what charm there is in the pale and wrinkled countenance of the Past, so to entice the soul of a young man. It seems to me like falling in love with one's grandmother. Give me the Present;—warm, glowing, palpitating with life.She is my mistress; and the Future stands waiting like my wife that is to be, for whom, to tell the truth, I care very little just now. Indeed, my friend, I wish you would take more heed of this philosophy of mine; and not waste the golden hours of youth in vain regrets for the past, and indefinite, dim longings for the future. Youth comes but once in a lifetime."
"Therefore," said Flemming; "let us so enjoy it as to be still young when we are old. For my part, I grow happier as I grow older. When I compare my sensations and enjoyments now, with what they were ten years ago, the comparison is vastly in favor of the present. Much of the fever and fretfulness of life is over. The world and I look each other more calmly in the face. My mind is more self-possessed. It has done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat and drenched by the rain of life."
"Now you speak like an old philosopher," answered the Baron, laughing. "But you deceive yourself. I never knew a more restless, feverishspirit than yours. Do not think you have gained the mastery yet. You are only riding at anchor here in an eddy of the stream; you will soon be swept away again in the mighty current and whirl of accident. Do not trust this momentary calm. I know you better than you know yourself. There is something Faust-like in you; you would fain grasp the highest and the deepest; and `reel from desire to enjoyment, and in enjoyment languish for desire.' When a momentary change of feeling comes over you, you think the change permanent, and thus live in constant self-deception."
"I confess," said Flemming, "there may be some truth in what you say. There are times when my soul is restless; and a voice sounds within me, like the trump of the archangel, and thoughts that were buried, long ago, come out of their graves. At such times my favorite occupations and pursuits no longer charm me. The quiet face of Nature seems to mock me."
"There certainly are seasons," replied the Baron, "when Nature seems not to sympathizewith her beloved children. She sits there so eternally calm and self-possessed, so very motherly and serene, and cares so little whether the heart of her child breaks or not, that at times I almost lose my patience. About that, too, she cares so little, that, out of sheer obstinacy, I become good-humored again, and then she smiles."
"I think we must confess, however," continued Flemming, "that all this springs from our own imperfection, not from hers. How beautiful is this green world, which we inhabit! See yonder, how the moonlight mingles with the mist! What a glorious night is this! Truly every man has a Paradise around him until he sins, and the angel of an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden. And even then there are holy hours, when this angel sleeps, and man comes back, and, with the innocent eyes of a child, looks into his lost Paradise again,—into the broad gates and rural solitudes of Nature. I feel this often. We have much to enjoy in the quiet and retirement of ourown thoughts. Boisterous mirth and loud laughter are not my mood. I love that tranquillity of soul, in which we feel the blessing of existence, and which in itself is a prayer and a thanksgiving. I find, however, that, as I grow older, I love the country less, and the city more."
"Yes," interrupted the Baron; "and presently you will love the city less and the country more. Say at once, that you have an undefined longing for both; and prefer town or country, according to the mood you are in. I think a man must be of a very quiet and happy nature, who can long endure the country; and, moreover, very well contented with his own insignificant person, very self-complacent, to be continually occupied with himself and his own thoughts. To say the least, a city life makes one more tolerant and liberal in his judgment of others. One is not eternally wrapped up in self-contemplation; which, after all, is only a more holy kind of vanity."
In conversation like this, the hours glided away; till at length, from the Giant's Tower, the Castleclock struck twelve, with a sound that seemed to come from the Middle Ages. Like watchmen from their belfries the city clocks answered it, one by one. Then distant and muffled sounds were heard. Inarticulate words seemed to blot the foggy air, as if written on wet paper. These were the bells of Handschuhsheimer, and of other villages on the broad plain of the Rhine, and among the hills of the Odenwald; mysterious sounds, that seemed not of this world.
Beneath them, in the shadow of the hills, lay the valley, like a fathomless, black gulf; and above were the cloistered stars, that, nun-like, walk the holy aisles of heaven. The city was asleep in the valley below; all asleep and silent, save the clocks, that had just struck twelve, and the veering, golden weathercocks, that were swimming in the moonshine, like golden fishes, in a glass vase. And again the wind of the summer night passed through the old Castle, and the trees, and the nightingales recorded under the dark, shadowy leaves, and the heart of Flemming was full.
When he had retired to his chamber, a feeling of utter loneliness came over him. The night before one begins a journey is always a dismal night; for, as Byron says,
"In leaving even the most unpleasant people
And places, one keeps looking at the steeple!"
And how much more so when the place and people are pleasant; as was the case with those, that Flemming was now leaving. No wonder he was sad and sleepless. Thoughts came and went, and bright and gloomy fancies, and dreams and visions, and sweet faces looked under his closed eyelids, and vanished away, and came again, and again departed. He heard the clock strike from hour to hour, and said, "Another hour is gone." At length the birds began to sing; and ever and anon the cock crew. He arose, and looked forth into the gray dawn; and before him lay the city he was so soon to leave, all white and ghastly, like a city that had arisen from its grave.
"All things must change," said he to the Baron, as he embraced him, and held him by the hand."Friends must be torn asunder, and swept along in the current of events, to see each other seldom, and perchance no more. For ever and ever in the eddies of time and accident we whirl away. Besides which, some of us have a perpetual motion in our wooden heads, as Wodenblock had in his wooden leg; and like him we travel on, without rest or sleep, and have hardly time to take a friend by the hand in passing; and at length are seen hurrying through some distant land, worn to a skeleton, and all unknown."
END OF VOL. I.