SELECT WORKS OF LUDWIG TIECK.

Tales from the "Phantasus,"
ETC.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN,
Great New Street, Fetter Lane.

Ludwig Tieck.

Tales From the "Phantasus," etc.
of
Ludwig Tieck.

London James Burns

mdcccxlv.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

GOETHE says of himself, that the first sight of a work of genuine art was always displeasing to him. There was no correspondence between his own mind and the object he was contemplating. It would not fit—became galling. He was made conscious of a deficiency in himself; and the result was, a feeling of annoyance and irritation at the cause of it. Yet if he could overcome this aversion, and set himself to work to understand it, in faith that ultimately he would find himself repaid, he never failed to make the most delightful discoveries; new powers developed themselves in himself, and beauty after beauty came out in the object.

It is to this cause that we attribute the comparatively small success which the works of Ludwig Tieck have hitherto met with in England—just because they are genuine; and we venture to affirm, with some confidence, that if people will take the same pains, they will find their efforts attended with a similar result to that above mentioned. There is nothing strange in all this: there is a deep gloomy earnestness about Tieck, an unprepossessing sternness, which makes people feel uncomfortable, without exactly knowing why. They cannot make out his way of thought. They feel it is deep and strong; but as they do not start with any confidence in him as a teacher, it serves only to make them painfully conscious of their own dimensions, and afraid of what the strong man may do with them. For all they know, he may be a tyrant, using his powers only for destruction; breaking in and wasting all their beautiful gardens, and leaving them nothing but ashes, and torn-off leaves, and withering flowers.

More or less, there is always something awful in a purely ethical writer. Tieck's works do not profess to be religious writings. He is concerned wholly with the nature of man as he finds him, and with the working of the moral laws, the natural tendencies of virtue and vice in the system of the universe; and in this way he contrasts strikingly with writers like Fouqué, whose works have so much of a distinct religious character. The wild preternatural spirit which breathes through all his tales forms but a subservient part. It does but represent the elements in which our moral nature hangs; and is, in fact, nothing more than the very element in which we all live, only held in a certain light that we may see it. Why he does not introduce the real influences of the other world as revelation makes them known to us, is a question which we need not ask ourselves; it is enough that it was not his purpose.

But perhaps we shall find the clue to the general tone of his mind in the state of things in Germany, and the general condition of European feeling at the time in which he was brought up.

His mind broke into consciousness at the stormy close of the eighteenth century, when Europe was rocking to her foundation, and all faith in God was dead. The seven thousand who would not bow the knees to the Deity of man were hanging off in fear and trembling, and watching for the doom of the world. In France, old Voltaire worshipped as a god. In Germany, the students at the universities caricaturing the sacrifice of the mass at the doors of the beerhouses, and one riding through the streets of Göttingen upon an ass, to try, as he said, what must have been the feelings of the Saviour (Goethe, Wahrheit und Dichtung). It was a time of which Jean Paul said, "Now strikes the twelfth hour of the night; and the foul birds of night are screaming, and spectres dance; the dead walk abroad, the living dream."

Tieck was born in the Roman Catholic Church; but he was brought up without any religious teaching; and the Church herself in those dark hours possessed but few or none of those outward marks of holiness which could make him feel safe in trusting himself implicitly to her guidance: the poison of infidelity was in her very heart; disgraced by the grossest idolatry, her enemies battering furiously at her from without, and she apparently helpless to resist them. It is not so now: she too has felt the warm breath of spring that has since swept over the face of the earth, and is waking her up to new life and energy; yet, if even now such scenes as those of last summer at Treves can shock the senses of the cultivated world, what must it have been then? She was like a cracked bell that would not ring when it was struck.

In a country, then, where there was no religion to which he could trust,—no philosophy but an infidel one; in despair of external guidance, Tieck was forced to the bold step of trying for himself what all these systems were made of; of going down himself, and searching the foundations on which they rested; what this nature of his really was. He dared stand boldly up before the world, and look it in the face, and ask it what it was. And the still more awful questions he asked of his own heart: What am I? How came I here? What is my business here? It is a fiery trial; and woe to him who fails! Better he had never been born! It is a sphinx he has to answer: if he find not the solution of the riddle, the monster will devour him. And few hearts but will quail, and few cheeks but will blanch, and few heads but will reel, with those bottomless abysses of scepticism yawning round. But it is like the Catholic legend of the purgatory of St. Patrick. Few of those who ventured in ever returned to tell the tale; but those who did were safe for ever. A man knows too well the value of the true, when he has been at such cost in the pursuit of it, to risk the losing of it again. "Abdallah" and "William Lovell," the two first books of any importance which Tieck published, shew him in the centre of the fearful struggle, wrestling with those two first unanswerable questions. And so at last he was content to leave them. To the last question he wrung out an answer from the depths of his own being; he comes now to offer it to us—a true teacher, if a stern one: and we shall do well to listen to his words; for the solemn earnestness which breathes through every line he has written shews how deeply he has read the mystery of life. The tales in the present volume were written in the first period after he emerged into a calmer and clearer light; and to these for the rest of this Preface we shall confine ourselves. We have said enough to account for their peculiar character externally; and the consideration of his later writings had better be left to another opportunity: to speak of them now would be but criticism without an object; before long some of them will be produced before the public, and what is to be said will be said then. Great things have happened in Germany since that time: a literature has sprung up almost without parallel for depth, and richness, and originality; and schools of poetry and philosophy various as those of Athens. Tieck has led one school, Goethe another; and if officious followers attempted to push them into rivalry, each knew his own place too well for such unnatural feud to endure.

The first startling feature, then, in all the characters in these tales is their terrible reality. In all the circumstances of the wild and wonderful, the supernatural working visibly, and interfering in the direction and control for good and evil of the affairs of the world; instead of finding the persons of the same fantastic character, such as we might naturally expect, as harmonising better with the elements in which they work; instead of saints with power of working miracles, or the ideal heroes of the age of chivalry,—we have the very men and women which we ourselves are, and such as we see every day around us. Excepting, perhaps, Goethe, no one knew his own age better than Tieck: he is a modern poet in every sense of the word; and that is why we claim so high a place for him.

The true poet of any time is he who can make that time transparent—who can let his readers in behind the curtain of their own souls and that of the society in which they live, and shew them what they are all doing, hoping, fearing—clear up their cloudy perceptions, and say for them what they would say for themselves if they could. This is exactly what Tieck does. His Emilius's, Egberts, Ludwigs,—what are they all, but the very men of whom every day he walked into the street he saw thousands? No matter what the conditions be under which he pictures them working, his men are real men, not fantastic; and that is all we have any right to require.

Yet I may say something about these marvellous conditions in which they appear; for perhaps even they are not so unreal as they seem.

It is only because we are used to them that this world and the beings that inhabit it do not seem wonderful. There is nothing in the phenomena which surround us abstractedly more reasonable than any other set might be which worked by fixed rules. As a matter of fact we experience one class, but that is all. It is not that one is wonderful and the other simple, as people seem to assume. This world we live in is, indeed, teeming with wonders. The poet has but to hold a magnifying-glass before it, and forthwith a thousand new forms of beauty start out before our eyes; and what before seemed most beautiful has become a monster. There are, indeed, poets who can produce the highest effect without any such magnifying; and the world as mirrored in their minds appears transfigured, its form and proportions continuing all the same. Yet the number of such spirits as have appeared on this planet of ours we may count upon our fingers, and of those who are fit to read and understand them the ratio is the same. Even Shakspere does not at times disdain the aid of the supernatural; and the idea of nature, as Tieck offers it, even its wildest and most fantastic form, is far deeper and nearer the truth than is the dull, common-place, lifeless thing which most men seem to regard it as. The question, however, is one which he will best qualify people to answer for themselves.

Most of the tales in the present volume belong to the "Phantasus." A party of persons meet together for conversation on various subjects of art and literature, and these stories, with sundry other dramas, are read aloud by different members of the society. They are introduced with the following prefatory dialogue:—

"It is not at every moment, nor every time we choose to turn to her," said Antony, "that Nature will unfold her secrets to us; or rather, it is not always that we are in the mood to feel her sacredness. There must first be a harmony in ourselves, if we are to find what surrounds us harmonious; otherwise we do but cheat ourselves with empty phrases, without ever rising to a true enjoyment of beauty. It may be, perhaps, that there are times when unexpectedly some blessed influence descends out of Heaven upon our hearts, and unlocks the door of inspiration; but towards this we can add nothing. We have no right, no means of looking for it; it is a revelation within us we know not how. So much is certain, that it is not above twice, or at most three times, in a man's life that he has the fortune, in any true sense, to see a sunrise. When we do see it, it does not pass away like a summer cloud before our minds; rather it forms one of the great epochs in our lives. From such ecstatic feelings as we receive then it is long and long ere we recover; by the side of these exalted moments years dwindle into nothingness. But it is only in the calmness of solitude that these high gifts can descend upon us. A party collecting itself to see it as a sight on the top of a mountain, is only standing as it were before an exhibition at a theatre, and can bring from it nothing but the same kind of empty pleasure and foolish criticisms."

"Still stranger is it," said Ernest, "that the great majority of men are so dead to that awe and wonder, that fearful amazement with which Nature often fills some minds. If they can feel it, it is only as an obscure bewildered sensation of they know not what."

"It is not only on the dreary peaks of the St. Gothard that we can feel the terribleness of Nature. There are times when the most beautiful scene is full of spectres that fly shrieking and screaming across our hearts. Such strange shadowy forms, such wild forebodings, go often hunting up and down our fancy, that we are fain to fly from them in terror, and rid ourselves of our phantom rider, by plunging into the dissipations of the world. While under such influences wild poems and stories often rise up in us to people the dreary chaos of desolation, and adorn it with creations of art; and these forms and figures will be unconscious betrayers of the tone and temper of the mind in which they spring. In these kind of stories the beautiful mingles itself with the terrible, the sublime with the childish, goading our fancy into a kind of poetic madness, and then turning it to roam at will through the entire fabric of our souls."

"Are the stories you are going to read to us of this kind?" asked Clara.

"Perhaps," replied Ernest.

"And not allegorical?"

"As you please to call them. There is not, and there cannot be any creation of art which has not some kind of allegory at the bottom of it, however little it may let itself be seen. The two forms of good and evil appear in every poem; they meet us at every turn, in every thing man produces, as the one eternal riddle in an endless multiplicity of forms, which he is for ever struggling to resolve. As there are particular aspects in which the most every-day life appears like a myth, so it is possible to feel oneself in as close connexion with, as much at home in the middle of the wildest wonders as the ordinary incidents of life. One may go so far as to say, that the commonest, simplest, pleasantest things, as well as the most marvellous, can only be said to be true, can only exert an influence on our minds, in so far as they contain some allegory as their groundwork, as the link which connects them with the system of the universe. This is why Dante's allegories come so home to us, because they pierce through and through to the very heart and centre of reality. Novalis says, there is no real history, except what might be fable. Of course, there are many weak and sickly poems of this kind, which merely drag wearily on to the moral, without taking the imagination along with them; and these of all the different sorts of instruction or entertainment are the most tiresome. But it is time to proceed to our tales."

And here we would gladly leave this matter, and let the tales tell their own story. What their idea is as a whole, they speak plainly enough; and it would be to destroy their effect, as well as to misunderstand the whole theory of this kind of fiction, to translate them into a series of moral reflections, and append a didactic sentiment to them as to one of Æsop's fables. And yet English readers will not be content with a suggestion of allegory; they will be asking for meanings, and requiring to have the whole matter laid out before them in fair, plain characters of black and white; so that notwithstanding my full consciousness of the general undesirableness and the unphilosophical nature of such a proceeding, I will offer a few general remarks, in the way of elucidation, for three or four of these stories, which shall put people on the scent to find the real meaning, not only of these stories in particular, but in general of any such as may be brought before them. Consoling myself, therefore, with the reflection that a preface is always read, as it is written, the last thing in a book, and that in that case my explanation can hurt no one, and may be of some profit to those who have failed to see any thing for themselves, I proceed.

"Egbert," "Eckhart," and the "Runenberg," naturally form into a group together. They are different exhibitions of very similar ideas, and it will be enough to explain one. I should advise people, however, to read the three together straightforward, and then try to analyse for themselves the impression left upon their minds. Perhaps it may be something of this sort: that a single sin unrepented of and unatoned for becomes a destiny; a seed from which, however diminutive and trifling it may look, a whole life of crime and wickedness shoots up as a matter of course, perhaps inevitably. Cause and effect, effect and cause, going on producing and reproducing each other, each successive step leading further and deeper into the mire, return becoming more and more difficult, and at last impossible.

Look at Christian in the "Runenberg." He is born to a calm and serene life of tranquillity and peace; affectionate parents—a simple routine of the gentlest and most beautiful of all nature's choicest occupations—far away from all temptation—secure from every danger—a home that ought to have given him all, and more than all, of enjoyment and content,—whose life could promise more happily than his? Yet he has no love, no heart, no feeling for it. His sense of duty is not strong enough to set him to work; he finds it dull and uninteresting; he craves for excitement, for something new. The plain life is not grand enough to suit his exalted aspirations: he must go to the mountains, to the ups and downs, and rough and rugged ways of the world, where he may climb, and hunt, and seek a broader range for activity and enjoyment; he does not think of asking leave—he goes; he never regrets leaving home; and at first finds all bright, and gay, and delightful sunshine. The happy, happy hunting-time; and who so happy in it as Christian? But it soon palls—it does not satisfy. The cup is poisoned, there is a gall and wormwood in the taste the sweet leaves behind; and again he thinks of home. He sings his old song; but the words come wearily and listlessly—he has no heart for hunting any more. He wishes to be at home again; but he makes no effort. The mysterious mandrake in sympathy with his old life wakes up and speaks to him. It is the warning-voice of conscience; but he dreams on. The tempter comes, and he is lost irretrievably. The moment of return is offered—now or never! and he refuses. He does not stay among the mountains; he flies away to the plains beyond; he flings off, as he fondly believes, the dark mysterious incidents of that night, as a wild and impious dream; he thinks he is what he was; away he goes again to the plains to his old employment, and he is happy, industrious, contented in it. Every thing again looks smooth, and bright, and beautiful; but he has not gone back, and now he may not. What should have been for his peace, now is but a further snare to make him fancy all is right with him. He does indeed set out to seek his father, but wearily and unwillingly. His way would have led him back over the mountains; but there he is not permitted to go. The object of his journey comes to meet him; they go back together; he becomes more and more prosperous, and sinks deeper and deeper into his fatal delusion. Yet the fatal tablet is in his heart, the bond by which he is bound to evil; even on his wedding-night he cannot forget the giver. At length the long-smothered poison burst out with all its fury, and flowers touch his heart no more. He curses them and nature; the warning mandrake, instead of the voice of conscience, is but a revelation of the power of evil. It has but taught him to despair, and seek his friends elsewhere; and he is lost for ever.

Of the more awful person in this fearful story I will not speak; but for the outline of the fate of Christian, who can look round him into the most ordinary life, and not see innumerable instances of it? The burden of the other two stories is very similar: the way to understand them is to try and analyse the feelings left on our mind by the whole, and not distract ourselves by assuming a fancied meaning, and speculating with the particulars to make each fragment fit our theory. Do not let us perplex ourselves to find out what the little dog is, what is the meaning of the bird, and the old woman. They may have many meanings; but we shall never find them by beginning at that end. It is only by the light of the whole that the parts become intelligible.

"The Love-charm" is a work of a different nature; it is one of the most remarkable of all Tieck's writings, and, as far as we know, stands alone among the productions of modern art. With the help of a popular German superstition, he has woven a tragedy out of the ordinary events of every-day life, the spirit of which approaches as near as modern thought can be made to approach to the fatalism of the Greek drama. A destiny of some kind, either moral or external, is essential to tragedy. What we mean by "the terrible" as applied to human action, is, that the free will of man is laid under the influence of some external power, which he has little or no ability to resist, which hurries him on through a series of action and incident, from which, if in full possession of his self-control, he would shrink in horror. Thus, in common life the crimes men commit under the influence of any of the loftier passions, such as love or revenge, or when goaded on by famine or despair, or which men do in ignorance, when the ignorance may partially, but not entirely, be their own fault, are terrible, and therefore tragic. The individual seems to be sacrificed, not to deserve all that has fallen on him; his fate becomes one of the startling mysteries of life. The meaner or more selfish the passion under which the crime is committed, or the cooler and more deliberate the action, the more what he does loses the character of tragic, and becomes merely disgusting. Pity goes with terror, and in such cases there can be no pity. The destiny in Shakspere's tragedies is a moral one; not an external power constraining, but an internal power impelling; working not against, but in and through the will. Such was the influence of his father's spirit on Hamlet, Hecate and the Witches on Macbeth, Iago's intellect on Othello, and so on with the rest. The Greek destiny, though in our way of thinking less human, is more terrible even than that of Shakspere. The sins of the fathers visited on the children, curses continuing to work generation after generation, and the helpless struggle of the victim only precipitating him into a darker doom—there is a stern grandeur about this form of thought; it is a feature of a broader philosophy than ours to bear to see the individual sacrificed, and believe that in some mysterious way the well-being of the whole is furthered by it, "with calm self-surrender to hear the murderer's hand upon a brother's throat, yet stand with upturned unquailing eyes before the everlasting Providence." It is a scheme of thought so unlike ours that we can hardly realise it, it is so like a monster to us. Yet this Love-charm is an attempt to do it; and although the spell is but over a single person, and forms no portion of a broad scheme of Providence; although for the stately forms of kings and heroes stalking across the stage, we have but the ball-going ladies and gentlemen of the eighteenth century, and but an old witch for the Delphic oracle, or the gods appearing in visible form; few people can rise from reading it without having been made to feel that this life, after all, is a stranger thing than they have been in the habit of imagining.

Emilius's character is eminently tragic. He has every feature which can interest us, without that moral or religious force in him which would make us feel shocked at his fate. The Greeks felt that good and holy men were no fitter subjects of tragedy than very wicked ones. There is something revolting (μιαρόν) in the idea that a good man can be allowed even in ignorance to fall into crime. Whatever be the mysterious ways of Providence; whatever fearful power there may be abroad, working on and influencing the destinies of mankind; what indeed is the meaning of the prince of the power of the air, or whether there be really such an element as chance; this, at least, we must believe, that the good man is in the hands of the Highest, and that the laws of nature would sooner be reversed than he be let fall from His hands. But Emilius is a dreamer, whose power exhausts itself in speculation, and never acts at all except on impulse: without firmness, without will to give oneness of design and consistency to his actions, this character—which is no law to itself, which will not command itself, no matter how pure may be in general its purposes, or how lofty its aspirations—is exactly the one most open to be laid under the spell of some other force. Every man's life, taken from beginning to end, looked back upon presents an exhibition of some one law or principle; whatever it be, in the end it is found to be tolerably uniform and consistent: its principle may be an internal one of will and conscience; if it is not this, if it grows not out of self-command, it is pretty sure to be some more fatally perilous one.

Emilius is admirably worked throughout. Contrast his feelings towards man and nature, and life and love, as they appear in the first short poem, and what they have become a few hours later, merely from the excitement and irritation produced by the ball. The scene of the village-marriage, the young man's warmth and nobleness, and exquisite susceptibility, are introduced to heighten our pity for his fate; while the way in which he is led to it, in a dreamy mood, listlessly yielding to the caprice of a wayward companion, and not from any real wish to find out want and relieve suffering, reduces the value of the action to a mere gratification of a passion, and thus, while it deepens our sympathy, adds nothing to our respect. The concluding scene is so magnificent, that we cannot run the risk of injuring its effect by offering any criticism on it; and with these few words we leave the "Love-charm."

In "Eckhart" and the "Runenberg" we have seen some of the moral trials which meet men on first starting into life. In the "Friends" we have the lighter kind of speculative. A very little philosophy serves to teach us how very unreal every thing is that passes before our eyes; how it all takes a colouring from our spirits; how the very same thing appears almost contradictory to different people, or to the same person in different moods; that we do not so much see things themselves, as our own image thrown into them. Accordingly, men begin to crave for a truer insight; they try to clear their intellect of the gauzy film of feeling, and see things as they are. Ludwig, a young indolent dreamer, full of all this kind of sentimental longing to be rid of sentimentality, is on his way to visit a sick friend. He sits down in the heat of the day under a tree to indulge in the pleasure of a little disconsolate reflection on his friend's melancholy letter, and insensibly falls off into a sleep, and dreams. At once he finds all the difficulties of the world solved for him, all his highest aspirations satisfied. The chasm that divides the worlds of sense and spirit is bridged over; his mind meets its true objects. The earth he despised he is now relieved from; the deceptions of nature all vanish; he sees things as they are; he is in the real world of truth and beauty; nothing is subjective any longer; he breathes a real genuine objectivity; all mortal weaknesses, and with them love, may not enter here; the phantoms of his childhood flit before him again, but no longer as they were; they are transfigured into the cold sublimity of Grecian goddesses. Alas! he is far from satisfied; after the first few days of rapture, he would gladly be on earth again. He wished to be as the gods; his wish is granted, and among the gods he cannot live. This cold world may be a very grand place, but it is not for such as him. Like Lessing's Phœnix, at first sight the dwellers here seem beautiful beyond all conception; the second glance shews that if a man will be like them he must be content to be the only one of his race, with none to love him and none that he can love. "He is like the spirits he can comprehend, not like them." The truth he sought, he finds he has left behind; the old earth is his true home; and men, be they what they will, are his brothers. His friend comes to meet him; but he does not know him again, because here for the first time he sees him as he is, while before he had only seen in him the image of himself. If this be truth, he is sick of it; he sighs for the deception again, if deception it was that had been so delightful; he wakes to find his vision but a dream, in the sweet reality of his friend's embrace.

The "Elves," the last story which we shall notice, is of a far more solemn character; with all its beauty, it has a sad dirge-like tone. Written fourteen years later than the others, it is now the true poet's lament over the hard insensibility of the world to its true good. The world of spirit lies stretched out under the eyes of the children of earth; the invisible visible; but from earth and to earthly perceptions, dull, gloomy, unattractive. To the busy practical man of business, to the prudential economist, the man of understanding, the workers in it seem but idle, worthless vagabonds; these lazy good-for-nothings, that scarcely till the ground, are never seen at church, and shew no symptom of respectability; why do they cumber the earth? the talk is of cage and pillory for them; no child of theirs may approach the unhallowed precincts. Accident leads a young girl beyond the boundary, and then how changed is every thing! The dull scene has become more brilliant than the gardens of Aladdin; scales fall from her eyes; now it is the old world that is dark and gloomy. Down among the mysteries of the fountains of Nature, she sees her now no longer yielding reluctantly an unwilling pittance to the sweat of the labour of man, but uncursed. At the word of the dwellers in that enchanted land, her choicest fruits and flowers she pours out in lavish abundance. The spirits of the elements work visibly there, and the mortal sees them, and knows now who are the true benefactors of mankind. Time and space exist not for these pure beings. Seven years are gone in one night, and the narrow fir-clump contains the garden of Eden.

The mortal goes back to earth: what she has seen she may not tell. These esoteric secrets of the poet are not for the crawling animal who cannot hold himself upright, nor turn his eyes to heaven, and who only knows the sun by the sight of his own shadow: but one of them she weds; and the child of these two—oh, what may we not hope from that child! Alas, in vain! In vain, from the secret labours of these beautiful beings, the brooks run fresh and full, and the fields overflow with plenty. Men will not see; in the midst of their abundance they curse the author of it. In an evil hour of weakness the initiated betrays the secret, and then all is gone. The gloom of the fir-clump vanishes; it becomes like any other. The gipsy rabble are gone; what all men hated, they are relieved of; but with this comes the loss, too, of all they prized—their corn, their wine, and fruitful trees. Famine comes, and drought and pestilence; the elfin child dies, and all is ruin and disaster. They see not their tokens. There is not one prophet more. What a deep philosophy runs through all this!

Have we heard our prophets? At the end of the last century one said:—

"Yes, another era is already dawning upon earth, when it shall be light, when man shall wake from high and lofty dreams; and these dreams he shall find realised, and that he has lost nothing but sleep.

"The rocks and stones which two veiled figures, Sin and Destiny, like Deucalion and Pyrrha, fling behind them at their true prophet, shall rise and be new men.

"And at the sunset gate of this age stands written, 'Here lies the way to wisdom and to virtue;' as at the west gate of the Chersonese the proud writing, 'Here lies the way to Byzantium.'

"O eternal Providence, thou wilt that it shall be light!"

Whether this prophecy be fulfilled or fulfilling, and whether Germany has yet done any thing to the accomplishment of it, is for time to shew. So much is clear, that not here in England only, but all Europe over, there is a move forward—a cry of hunger and thirst for something deeper and truer; and to this move no living man has more contributed than Ludwig Tieck. He is the last, the only survivor of the noble band of German poets; and Europe has not a man of whom she is more justly proud.

The morning of his life broke in storm and tempest. Like some infant river just starting from its snowy cradle in its native mountains, foaming and dashing down its narrow bed, bounding from rock to rock, and powdering the air with vapour, which catches the sun's rays as it rises, and shivers them into a thousand brilliant hues,—his strong mind broke fiercely and impetuously from the clouds of error, and unbelief, and freezing scepticism, in which it was nurtured; at first, with loud questionings of fate, troubled and dark, yet, with all its fallings, flinging round itself in the wildest profusion rays and flashes of exquisite beauty. It rolls on down from its mountains; it has swept now over every rock and shoal, and flows on calm, serene, and deep, and clear through smiling fields, and woods, and villages, and happy men and women, bearing on its broad bosom all who trust themselves on it for profit or enjoyment, from the tiny pleasure-boat of the young lover to the tall ship sweeping proudly forward, laden with the choicest fruits and produce of every clime. As the heavens draw up the water from the ocean, and, lading their clouds with it, bear it off into the centre of huge continents, and with it start new fountains into life, which again, winding as veins through all lands, and scattering blessings as they go, flow back at last into their parent sea,—so in all ages pure wisdom, entering into lofty spirits, sends them down through their generation, scoring out deep channels on it as they pass: the stream of life and light makes its way again to the source from which it came; but with this mortal life it ceases not to flow: its recipients become the veins of the world, and while the world lasts they endure—as the channels of truth where men drink and live. And one of them is Tieck.

J. A. F.

THE RECONCILIATION.

TWILIGHT was already gathering, when a young knight, mounted on his charger, trotted through a lonely vale: the clouds grew gradually darker, and the glow of evening paler: a little brook murmured softly along, concealed by the mountain bushes that overhung it.

The knight sighed, and surrendered himself to thought; the bridle hung loose on the horse's neck; the steed itself no longer felt the rider's spur, and now paced slowly along the narrow path that wound round the precipitous rock.

The noise of the little brook waxed louder; the clang of the hoof rung through the solitude; the shades of evening grew deeper, and the ruins of an old castle lay wondrously poised on the precipice of the opposite mountain. The knight became more and more absorbed in thought; he gazed fixedly and vacantly on the darkness, scarcely noticing the objects that environed him.

Now the moon rose behind him: her splendour tipped tree and shrub with gold: the valley narrowed apace, and the shadow of the knight reached to the opposite hill: the streamlet went foaming, all silver, over the broken rocks, and a nightingale began her ravishing song, till it soon sounded clearer from the forest. The knight now saw a crooked-grown willow before him, that fell over the brook, while the water flowed through its weeping branches. On a nearer approach, its dark outline assumed a more decided form, and he now distinctly descried the figure of a monk, bending low over the stream. He let the faint ripple flow through the hollow of his hand, while a low and plaintive voice exclaimed, "She comes not, she comes not! ah, in an eternity she'll not float by!"

The steed shied: a sudden dread took possession of the rider: he struck both spurs into his charger's flanks, and loudly neighing, it galloped away with him.

The narrow path now grew wider, and led into a thick wood of oak, through whose densely woven branches the moon could but sparely shoot her beams. The knight soon stood before a cave, from which a small fire shone invitation towards him: he alighted, tied his horse to a tree, and entered the hollow.

Before a wooden crucifix kneeled an aged hermit in deep devotion; he was not aware of the knight's entrance, but still continued in fervent prayer. A long white beard flowed down over his breast: years had ploughed deep furrows in his brow: his eyes were dim: he had the seeming of a saint. The knight took his stand at some distance from him, folded his hands across his breast, and repeated some Ave-Marias. Then the old man arose, dried a tear in his eye, and observed the stranger in his dwelling.

"Welcome to thee!" cried he, and offered the stranger a hand trembling with age.

The knight pressed it warmly; he felt his soul yearn towards him, and his reverence was transmuted into love.

"You did right to turn in here," continued the hermit, "for you will not find a village or a hostelry for many a league. But why so silent? Draw near to the fire and rest, and I will serve up such a little meal as this cave of mine can best supply."

The knight took the helmet from his head: his brown locks fell adown his neck: the old man gazed on him with a searching glance.

"Why does your eye wander so shily and unfixedly about?" he resumed, in a friendly tone.

The knight seemed to be collecting his thoughts. "A strange feeling of awe," replied he, "has seized on me since riding through that valley. Explain to me, if you can, the singular phenomenon which I there beheld: or perhaps it is not a spirit, but an inhabitant of these parts: and yet that is impossible; I saw him wave to and fro like the misty vapour in the gleam of the rising moon; and a cold thrill of fear drove me this way. Explain to me the riddle and the words which I heard through the whispering of the bushes."

"You saw the apparition?" said the hermit inquiringly, in a tone which betrayed a warm interest in the event; "well, be seated at the fire, and I will tell you the unhappy tale."

Both took their places. The old man appeared lost in thought. The knight was all attention; and after a short silence the hermit began:

"It is now thirty years since I roamed the land in quest of adventures and strife, just as you do now; since my locks flowed, just as yours do, over my shoulders, and my glance with equal boldness confronted danger. Grief has made me a decrepit old man before my time; not a trace can you now discover of the lusty warrior, who at that time won the respect of knighthood and the hearts of lovely girls. All is as a dream to me now, and my joys and sorrows are shrouded in the twilight distance. Farewell, ye happy days! scarce a faint glimmer from you now can reach my cold worn heart.

"I had a brother, who was only two years older than myself. We were like each other in form and feeling, except that he was more impetuous and stormy, and more especially inclined to be passionate. We loved each other fondly; we shared no pleasure apart; in every conflict he fought at my side; we seemed to live but for one another.

"He became acquainted with a lady, whose love soon formed him to an accomplished man. Her tenderness tempered his boisterous spirit; she taught him that gentleness which is essential to every man who will appear amiable in the eye of his friend. Clara became his wife; and after the lapse of a year, the mother of a boy. Nothing now seemed wanting to his happiness.

"About this time the signal of the cross was again raised against the infidels. Fired with holy zeal he girt on the sword, took the sign of the Redeemer on his cloak, and marched forth with the enthusiast throng to peril and to fame. My entreaties and his wife's tears were too weak to detain him; the fervour of his enthusiasm tore him from our arms. Ah, heavens! I still hoped at that time that we should have the delight of seeing him once more: I foreboded dangers for him, but not those sad events which have beguiled my life of every joy.

"We now looked in vain for news: our anxious impatience suggested to us a thousand mishaps, and fed us again with increased hope. Week after week, and month after month passed away without our expectation being in the smallest degree satisfied. To be sure, we heard that on their march to the Holy Land discomforts of a thousand kinds had befallen the crusaders; that they had been attacked by savage hordes, and given up to misery and want; that the greater part of them had been scattered in the woods, there to become a prey to hunger or the wild beasts. But we had no special news of my brother, and we were obliged to accustom ourselves to the thought that he too belonged to the greater number of those unfortunates. His desolate widow wept for him daily, and gave little ear to the weak grounds of consolation that issued from the dejected heart of a suffering brother.

"Five long sorrowful years were thus passed in lamentation and tears, when I beheld at a tournament the daughter of William of Orlaburg. Oh, sir knight, let me dwell for a moment on this brilliant epoch of my life, and refresh my soul on the beautiful past. Ah, a rapturous spring rose upon me, but winter returned all the colder to my heart: not a flower remains to me of all those sunny days; a spiteful hurricane has snapt them all away. Ida of Orlaburg was the most charming creature of her sex: graceful and full of majesty, her lofty figure claimed respect of every one, and her charitable temper won every heart. She united the loveliness of woman with the nobility of manly strength.

"At a tournament given by her father, she saw Clara; her soul was interested by the deep sorrow which spoke in the features of the desolate wife. In misfortune, friendships are the most quickly and the most lastingly formed. They saw each other very often; they loved each other like two sisters, that had grown up together and shared each other's every thought; and on the death of Ida's father, Clara had her friend a constant guest at her castle. Ida it was who at last dried the tears from eyes that were dim with weeping; who taught her to smile again at the rising of the sun, and who, as I saw her so often, at last robbed me of my heart and of my peace.

"I experienced all the torments and all the ecstacies of love; my nights were sleepless, my days without repose; the world lay extended more beautifully before me; a charm and a loveliness sprang up every where beneath my footsteps; an impetuous longing hurried me to her; and yet in her presence my heart beat still more madly.

"Am I not a child to speak to you so diffusely of my folly? In a few months I disclosed to her my love; with an angel voice she assured me of her attachment; we were betrothed, and—oh, who could participate in my sense of happiness!—in two months we were to be married. How did I reckon up every day and every hour! The tide of time flowed past me in vexatious dilatoriness; I wanted to see it roll along in a foaming torrent at my feet.

"At last a messenger reached us with news of my brother. It was a knight from Spain who had seen him in Africa. Corsairs had taken the vessel in which he sailed, and sold him as a slave in Tunis. A very high price was set on his liberty.

"We were more pleased than saddened by this news, because we had already taken his death for certain. Clara now dried her tears, and surrendered herself to her joy. She got together the required sum as quickly as possible, and made preparations to travel to her husband.

"The stranger knight was in fact returning to Spain, and Clara proposed setting out in his company; while Ida, who found it impossible to part from her friend, resolved to accompany her in knightly costume.

"My most urgent expostulations were in vain, and I was at last obliged to yield to their united entreaties. My brother's infant son was consigned to the protection of a convent. They took their departure, and, full of foreboding, my weeping eye followed them.

"How I burned with desire to accompany them! but I was entangled in a feud, in which I had promised a friend my succour, and my pledged word bound me to Germany. Ah! in an ill-fated hour they departed; I never beheld them more.

"From that moment begins the dark period of my life. I was successful in the feud. Oh, that I had fallen beneath the sword of an enemy, to have escaped long years of torture, and the frightful hours in which I first—oh, forgive me these tears! they still often flow at the remembrance of Ida and my brother: age cannot so blunt our sympathies that pain may not sometimes return with new force to our bosoms.

"On their journey Ida was seized with the unhappy fancy of not discovering herself to my brother till they all should have reached their native country again, in order that she might then surprise him the more joyfully as my bride. They arrived in Spain, and sent the required sum to Tunis. The prisoner was liberated; on the wings of affection he hastened over the sea, and forgot on Clara's bosom, in one moment of rapture, the sufferings which he had endured for years.

"Ida was soon presented to him as a friend; he received her kindly, and enjoyed for some days in the society of his spouse that happiness which he had so long been deprived of. But his eyes were soon rivetted on Ida: he observed the tender connexion subsisting between her and his wife, and suspicion kindled in his soul. 'She is untrue to me,' cried he when alone; 'she divides her heart between me and this hateful stranger!'

"He now watched them both more closely than before, and soon thought his suspicions justified; he thought he could discover a tenderness which neither of them even took pains to conceal. By degrees he became colder towards his wife, hiding the wound she had inflicted; whilst she on her part, unconstrainedly and without the shadow of fear, shared her affections with her consort and her friend.

"Jealousy raged in my brother's bosom; he began to hate Clara and her companion; he imputed a significancy to every look and every gesture; the rancour within him robbed him of his sleep, or suspicion appalled him in hideous dreams.

"'For this, then, I came across the sea,' said he to himself; 'these are the joys of meeting; these, then, are the delights of my love. I am come to be the prey of racking torture. I find my home again at the side of a faithless wife, and she herself meets me only that she may the earlier proclaim to me her effrontery and her broken vows.'

"He made an old squire the confidant of his chagrin: both now watched the two friends with an indefatigable vigilance; they beheld a thousand proofs of the supposed infidelity, without in the least conjecturing the true posture of affairs; my brother's fury rose more and more, and a dark resolve at last began to ripen in his breast.

"It happened that he was with them and a faithful servant in a small boat. The moon was up, and the shallop drifted slowly down the gentle stream; he sat in cold unconsciousness by Clara, who had laid her hand in his. He caught her eye with a searching glance; her husband seemed strange to her, and abashed she sunk her head. Ida had seized her other hand.

"'Traitress!' cried he of a sudden; 'impostor! who sport with the peace of a man, with truth, and truth's best vows!' Ah! at that moment his good genius forsook him!—gnashing his teeth, he plunged his dagger into Clara's bosom: Ida sank lifeless at the side of her friend; he grasped the bloody poniard, raised the reeking blade, and smote my Ida to the heart.

"The dying Clara discovered to him his error. Her blood floated down the stream. The film gathered in her eye. For a long time he stood like one entranced; then sprang into the river, swam unconsciously to land, and, deaf and dumb, without sensation or words of woe, he set out on his return to Germany.

"Thus, then, an ill-starred jest was the wreck of my every hope and joy. In the mean time, I stood at a window of the castle, anxiously awaiting the return of those I loved. Often was I aroused from my musing mood by the hoof-tramp of horses: my eye wandered vacantly over field and hill, while a joyful thrill passed through me at the sight of a female figure.

"At length came a knight dashing up on a black charger: it was my brother. But ah, my joy was vain; his countenance was haggard, his eyes rolled wildly, his heart beat impetuously.

"'Where are Ida and Clara?' cried I.

"A tear was the answer; he hung speechless on my neck.

"'In the grave,' said he at length, violently sobbing.

"O heavens! those were fearful hours that I then went through! My fist trembled, my heart throbbed convulsively; a low voice whispered murder and vengeance in my ears: but I saw my brother's wretchedness—I forgave him; and well it is for me that I did so.

"Oh, that he could have forgiven himself! But his misery and his crime were present day and night to his soul. Clara came back to him in his dreams, and shewed him the dagger reeking with her heart's warm blood. From that hour he never smiled again.

"'I am condemned to the most ghastly misery,' cried he, as he grasped me by the hand; 'nor on the other side of the grave shall I be at rest; my spirit will wander still in quest of Clara, and still never find her: a fearful future drags its slow length in review before me. Ah, my brother! even in death there is no more hope for me.'

"My heart was broken; but my life seemed now granted that I might console him. We left the castle, and laid aside our knightly garb; we shrouded ourselves in holy weeds, and thus we went wayfaring through the dark woods and over the desert plains, till this cavern at last received us.

"Often would my brother stand for long, long days by that rivulet, gazing vacantly on the waters; even in the night he was sometimes there; and then he would sit on a sundered fragment of the rock, while his tears trickled down into the stream. My efforts to console him were all in vain.

"At last he revealed to me that Clara had appeared to him in a dream; but she never could be reconciled, she said, till her blood should float down that little brook; and for this reason he sat on the bank, counting and watching the waves, in the eager hope of again finding the drops that had gushed from her heart in that fatal hour.

"I wept at the sight of my brother's madness; I tried to rid him of the thought, but it was impossible. 'Ah!' cried he, 'and in distant Spain her blood was shed; it flowed down the stream into the sea: how long will it be before it returns hitherward to the springs?'

"Now he scarcely ever left the brook—his sorrow and his delusion increased with every day: at last he died of a broken heart. I buried him by my cave.

"Since then I have often seen his ghost sitting beside the stream: it was always watching the passing ripple, and softly sighing, 'She comes not—she comes not.' A thrill of horror runs through me every time, and I pray till midnight for the peace of his soul."

The hermit ended; he cast down his eyes and silently counted his beads. The knight had listened to the tale with anxious interest, and after a few moments he inquired—

"And where was your brother's son left?"

"We sought him in the convent," replied the old man, "but he had clandestinely made his escape from the monks."

"Your name?"

"Why do you so fix your gaze upon me?—Ulfo of Waldburg."

"O my uncle!" cried the knight, and threw himself on the bosom of the astonished hermit. "Doubt not," cried he; "ah! that unhappy shade by the rivulet is the spirit of my father."

"Your father! his name was"—

"Charles of Waldburg. I ran away from the monks because their lonely cloisters appeared a prison to me. I took service with a knight; and now for some years I have been seeking you and my father."

"O my son!" cried the old man, and locked him more fervently in his arms; "yes, you are he: I know you by that sparkling eye; those are your father's features and his chestnut locks."

"O my unhappy father!" sighed the youth; "would that I could procure his wandering spirit peace! would that my prayers could conciliate Heaven and my mother's shade!"

He stood in a musing mood, with his hands folded: "Uncle," cried he, "what, if I have read aright the import of the dream? what, if my mother's spirit had wished to direct the wretched man to me? Oh, come now!"

They left the cave. Clouds shrouded the moon; a hallowed stillness spread its mantle over the world; they went into the lonely forest as into a temple. Charles kneeled down on his father's grave.

"Spirit of my father," said he in fervent prayer, "oh, hear thy son! hearken to thy son, O my mother! and, gracious Heaven, let me not implore thee in vain! Give rest to the unhappy one, and let the dread pilgrim find a lodging in the grave. Oh, let me hear from thee, spirit of my father, whether I conceived aright the sense of the prophecy! Oh, grant me some sign that thou art reconciled with my mother's ghost!"

Like the soft echo of a flute came a breathing through the tree-tops: two bright apparitions floated downwards in closely-wound embrace. They came nearer. "We are reconciled," whispered a more than earthly voice. Two hands were stretched forth over the kneeling one; and like a light zephyr the words passed over him, "Be true to knighthood!"

A cloud glided away from before the moon; and the phantoms dissolved in her silver radiance. In glad amazement the two mortals gazed long and lingeringly after them.

THE FRIENDS.

IT was a beautiful spring morning, when Lewis Wandel went out to visit a sick friend, in a village some miles distant from his dwelling. This friend had written to him to say that he was lying dangerously ill, and would gladly see him and speak to him once more.

The cheerful sunshine now sparkled in the bright green bushes; the birds twittered and leapt to and fro on the branches; the larks sang merrily above the thin fleeting clouds; sweet scents rose from the fresh meadows, and the fruit-trees of the garden were white and gay in blossom.

Lewis's eye roamed intoxicate around him; his soul seemed to expand; but he thought of his invalid friend, and he bent forward in silent dejection. Nature had decked herself all in vain, so serenely and so brightly; his fancy could only picture to him the sick bed and his suffering brother.

"How song is sounding from every bough!" cried he; "the notes of the birds mingle in sweet unison with the whisper of the leaves; and yet in the distance, through all the charm of the concert, come the sighs of the sick one."

Whilst he thus communed, a troop of gaily-clad peasant girls issued from the village; they all gave him a friendly salutation, and told him that they were on their merry way to a wedding; that work was over for that day, and had to give place to festivity. He listened to their tale, and still their merriment rang in the distance on his ear; still he caught the sound of their songs, and became more and more sorrowful. In the wood he took his seat on a dismantled tree, drew the oft-read letter from his pocket, and ran through it once more:—

"My very dear friend,—I cannot tell why you have so utterly forgotten me, that I receive no news from you. I am not surprised that men forsake me; but it heartily pains me to think that you too care nothing about me. I am dangerously ill; a fever saps my strength: if you delay visiting me any longer, I cannot promise you that you will see me again. All nature revives, and feels fresh and strong; I alone sink lower in languor; the returning warmth cannot animate me; I see not the green fields, nothing but the tree that rustles before my window, and sings death-songs to my thoughts; my bosom is pent, my breathing is hard; and often I think the walls of my room will press closer together and crush me. The rest of you in the world are holding the most beautiful festival of life, whilst I must languish in the dwelling of sickness. Gladly would I dispense with spring, if I could but see your dear face once more: but you that are in health never earnestly think what it really is to be ill, and how dear to us then, in our helplessness, the visit of a friend is: you do not know how to prize those precious minutes of consolation, because the whole world receives you in the warmth and the fervour of its friendship. Ah! if you did but know, as I do, how terrible is death, and how still more terrible it is to be ill,—O Lewis, how would you hasten then to behold once more this frail form, that you have hitherto called your friend, and that by and by will be so ruthlessly dismembered! If I were well, I would haste to meet you, or fancy that you may perhaps be ill at this moment. If I never see you again—farewell."

What a painful impression did the suffering depicted in this letter make upon Lewis's heart, amid the liveliness of Nature, as she lay in brilliancy before him! He melted into tears, and rested his head on his hand.—"Carol now, ye foresters," thought he; "for ye know no lamentation; ye lead a buoyant poetic existence, and for this are those swift pinions granted you; oh, how happy are ye, that ye need not mourn: warm summer calls you, and ye wish for nothing more; ye dance forth to meet it, and when winter is advancing, ye are gone! O light-winged merry forest-life, how do I envy thee! Why are so many heavy cares burdened upon poor man's heart? Why may he not love without purchasing his love by wailing—his happiness by misery? Life purls on like a fleeting rivulet beneath his feet, and quenches not his thirst, his fervid longing."

He became more and more absorbed in thought, and at last he rose and pursued his way through the thick forest. "If I could but help him," cried he; "if Nature could but supply me with a means of saving him; but as it is, I feel nothing but my own impotency, and the pain of losing my friend. In my childhood I used to believe in enchantment and its supernatural aids; would I now could hope in them as happily as then!"

He quickened his steps; and involuntarily all the remembrances of the earliest years of his childhood crowded back upon him: he followed those forms of loveliness, and was soon entangled in such a labyrinth as not to notice the objects that surrounded him. He had forgotten that it was spring—that his friend was ill: he hearkened to the wondrous melodies, which came borne, as if from distant shores, upon his ear: all that was most strange united itself to what was most ordinary: his whole soul was transmuted. From the far vista of memory, from the abyss of the past, all those forms were summoned forth that ever had enraptured or tormented him; all those dubious phantoms were aroused, that flutter formlessly about us, and gather in dizzy hum around our heads. Puppets, the toys of childhood, and spectres, danced along before him, and so mantled over the green turf, that he could not see a single flower at his feet. First love encircled him with its twilight morning gleam, and let down its sparkling rainbow over the mead: his earliest sorrows glided past him in review, and threatened to greet him in the same guise at the end of his pilgrimage. Lewis sought to arrest all these changeful feelings, and to retain a consciousness of self amid the magic of enjoyment,—but in vain. Like enigmatic books, with figures grotesquely gay, that open for a moment and in a moment are closed, so unstably and fleetingly all floated before his soul.

The wood opened, and in the open country on one side lay some old ruins, encompassed with watch-towers and ramparts. Lewis was astonished at having advanced so quickly amid his dreams. He emerged from his melancholy, as he did from the shades of the wood; for often the pictures within us are but the reflection of outward objects. Now rose on him, like the morning sun, the memory of his first poetical enjoyments, of his earliest appreciations of that luscious harmony which many a human ear never inhales.

"How incomprehensibly," said he, "did those things commingle then, which seemed to me eternally parted by such vast chasms; my most undefined presentiments assumed a form and outline, and gleamed on me in the shape of a thousand subordinate phantoms, which till then I had never descried! So names were found me for things that I had long wished to speak of: I became recipient of earth's fairest treasures, which my yearning heart had so long sought for in vain: and how much have I to thank thee for since then, divine power of fancy and of poetry! How hast thou smoothed for me the path of life, that erst appeared so rough and perplexed! Ever hast thou revealed to me new sources of enjoyment and happiness, so that no arid desert presents itself to me now: every stream of sweet voluptuous inspiration hath wound its way through my earth-born heart: I have become intoxicate with bliss, and have communed with beings of heaven."

The sun sank below the horizon, and Lewis was astonished that it was already evening. He was insensible of fatigue, and was still far from the point which he had wished to reach before night: he stood still, without being able to understand how the crimson of evening could be so early mantling the clouds; how the shadows of every thing were so long, while the nightingale warbled her song of wail in the thicket. He looked around him: the old ruins lay far in the background, clad in blushing splendour; and he doubted whether he had not strayed from the direct and well-known road.

Now he remembered a phantasy of his early childhood, that till that moment had never recurred to him: it was a female form of awe, that glided before him over the lonely fields: she never looked round, yet he was compelled, against his will, to follow her, and to be drawn on into unknown scenes, without in the least being able to extricate himself from her power. A slight thrill of fear came over him, and yet he found it impossible to obtain a more distinct recollection of that figure, or to usher back his mind into the frame, in which this image had first appeared to him. He sought to individualise all these singular sensations, when, looking round by chance, he really found himself on a spot which, often as he had been that way, he had never seen before.

"Am I spell-bound?" cried he; "or have my dreams and fancies crazed me? Is it the wonderful effect of solitude that makes me irrecognisable to myself; or do spirits and genii hover round me and hold my senses in thrall? Sooth, if I cannot enfranchise myself from myself, I will await that woman-phantom that floated before me in every lonely place in my childhood."

He endeavoured to rid himself of every kind of phantasy, in order to get into the right road again; but his recollections became more and more perplexed; the flowers at his feet grew larger, the red glow of evening more brilliant, and wondrously shaped clouds hung drooping on the earth, like the curtains of some mystic scene that was soon to unfold itself. A ringing murmur arose from the high grass, and the blades bowed to one another, as if in friendly converse; while a light warm spring rain dropped pattering amongst them, as if to wake every slumbering harmony in wood, and bush, and flower. Now all was rife with song and sound; a thousand sweet voices held promiscuous parley; song entwined itself in song, and tone in tone; while in the waning crimson of eve lay countless blue butterflies rocking, with its radiance sparkling from their wavy wings. Lewis fancied himself in a dream, when the heavy dark-red clouds suddenly rose again, and a vast prospect opened on him in unfathomable distance. In the sunshine lay a gorgeous plain, sparkling with verdant forests and dewy underwood. In its centre glittered a palace of a myriad hues, as if composed all of undulating rainbows and gold and jewels: a passing stream reflected its various brilliancy, and a soft crimson æther environed this hall of enchantment: strange birds, he had never seen before, flew about, sportively flapping each other with their red and green wings: larger nightingales warbled their clear notes to the echoing landscape: lambent flames shot through the green grass, flickering here and there, and then darting in coils round the mansion. Lewis drew nearer, and heard ravishing voices sing the following words:—

Traveller from earth below,
Wend thee not farther,
In our hall's magic glow
Bide with us rather.
Hast thou with longing scann'd
Joy's distant morrow,
Cast away sorrow,
And enter the wish'd-for land.

Without further scruple, Lewis stepped to the shining threshold, and lingering but a moment ere he set his foot on the polished stone, he entered. The gates closed after him.

"Hitherward! hitherward!" cried invisible lips, as from the inmost recesses of the palace; and with loudly throbbing heart he followed the voices. All his cares, all his olden remembrances were cast away: his inmost bosom rang with the songs that outwardly encompassed him: his every regret was stilled: his every conscious and unconscious wish was satisfied. The summoning voices grew so loud, that the whole building re-echoed them, and still he could not find their origin, though he long seemed to have been standing in the central hall of the palace.

At length a ruddy-cheeked boy stepped up to him, and saluted the stranger guest: he led him through magnificent chambers, full of splendour and melody, and at last entered the garden, where Lewis, as he said, was expected. Entranced he followed his guide, and the most delicious fragrance from a thousand flowers floated forth to meet him. Broad shady walks received them. Lewis's dizzy gaze could scarcely gain the tops of the high immemorial trees: bright-coloured birds sat perched upon the branches: children were playing on guitars in the shade, and they and the birds sang to the music. Fountains shot up, with the clear red of morning sparkling upon them: the flowers were as high as shrubs, and parted spontaneously as the wanderer pressed through them. He had never before felt the hallowed sensations that then enkindled in him; never had such pure heavenly enjoyment been revealed to him: he was over-happy.

But bells of silver sound rang through the trees, and their tops were bowed: the birds and children with the guitars were hushed: the rose-buds unfolded: and the boy now conducted the stranger into the midst of a brilliant assembly.

Lovely dames of lofty form were seated on beautiful hanks of turf, in earnest conference. They were above the usual height of the human race, and their more than earthly beauty had at the same time something of awe in it, from which the heart shrunk back in alarm. Lewis dared not interrupt their conversation: it seemed as if he were among the god-like forms of Homer's song, where every thought must be excluded that formed the converse of mortals. Odd little spirits stood round, as ready ministers, waiting attentively for the wink of the moment that should summon them from their posture of quietude: they fixed their glances on the stranger, and then looked jeeringly and significantly at each other. At last the beautiful women ceased speaking, and beckoned Lewis to approach; he was still standing with an embarrassed air, and drew near to them with trembling.

"Be not alarmed," said the fairest of them all; "you are welcome to us here, and we have long been expecting you: long have you wished to be in our abode,—are you satisfied now?"

"Oh, how unspeakably happy I am!" exclaimed Lewis; "all my dearest dreams have met with their fulfillment, all my most daring wishes are gratified now: yes, I am, I live among them. How it has happened so, I cannot comprehend: sufficient for me, that it is so. Why should I raise a new wail over this enigma, ere my olden lamentations are scarcely at an end?"

"Is this life," asked the lady, "very different from your former one?"

"My former life," said Lewis, "I can scarcely remember. But has, then, this golden state of existence fallen to my lot? this beautiful state, after which my every sense and prescience so ardently aspired; to which every wish wandered, that I could conceive in fancy, or realise in my inmost thought; though its image, veiled in mist, seemed ever strange in me—and is it, then, mine at last? have I, then, achieved this new existence, and does it hold me in its embrace? Oh, pardon me, I know not what I say in my delirium of ecstacy, and might well weigh my words more carefully in such an assemblage."

The lady signed; and in a moment every minister was in motion: there was a stirring among the trees, every where a running to and fro, and speedily a banquet was placed before Lewis of fair fruits and fragrant wines. He sat down again, and music rose anew on the air. Rows of beautiful boys and girls sped round him, intertwined in the dance, while uncouth little cobolds lent life to the scene, and excited loud laughter by their ludicrous gambols. Lewis noted every sound and every gesture: he seemed newly-born since his initiation into this joyous existence. "Why," thought he, "are those hopes and reveries of ours so often laughed at, that pass into fulfilment sooner than ever had been expected? Where, then, is that border-mark between truth and error which mortals are ever ready with such temerity to set up? Oh, I ought in my former life to have wandered oftener from the way, and then perhaps I should have ripened all the earlier for this happy transmutation."

The dance died away; the sun sank to rest; the august dames arose; Lewis too left his seat, and accompanied them on their walk through the quiet garden. The nightingales were complaining in a softened tone, and a wondrous moon rose above the horizon. The blossoms opened to its silver radiance, and every leaf kindled in its gleam; the wide avenues became of a glow, casting shadows of a singular green; red clouds slumbered on the green grass of the fields; the fountains turned to gold, and played high in the clear air of heaven.

"Now you will wish to sleep," said the loveliest of the ladies, and shewed the enraptured wanderer a shadowy bower, strewed with soft turf and yielding cushions. Then they left him, and he was alone.

He sat down and watched the magic twilight glimmering through the thickly-woven foliage. "How strange is this!" said he to himself: "perhaps I am now only asleep, and I may dream that I am sleeping a second time, and may have a dream in my dream; and so it may go on for ever, and no human power ever be able to awake me. No! unbeliever that I am! it is beautiful reality that animates me now, and my former state perhaps was but the dream of gloom." He lay down, and light breezes played round him. Perfume was wafted on the air, and little birds sang lulling songs. In his dreams he fancied the garden all around him changed: the tall trees withered away; the golden moon fallen from the sky, leaving a dismal gap behind her; instead of the watery jet from the fountains, little genii gushed out, caracoling over each in the air, and assuming the strangest attitudes. Notes of woe supplanted the sweetness of song, and every trace of that happy abode had vanished. Lewis awoke amid impressions of fear, and chid himself for still feeding his fancy in the perverse manner of the habitants of earth, who mingle all received images in rude disorder, and present them again in this garb in a dream. A lovely morning broke over the scene, and the ladies saluted him again. He spoke to them more intrepidly, and was to-day more inclined to cheerfulness, as the surrounding world had less power to astonish him. He contemplated the garden and the palace, and fed upon the magnificence and the wonders that he met there. Thus he lived many days happily, in the belief that his felicity was incapable of increase.

But sometimes the crowing of a cock seemed to sound in the vicinity; and then the whole edifice would tremble, and his companions turn pale: this generally happened of an evening, and soon afterwards they retired to rest. Then often there would come a thought of earth into Lewis's soul; then he would often lean out of the windows of the glittering palace to arrest and fix these fleeting remembrances, and to get a glimpse of the high road again, which, as he thought, must pass that way. In this sort of mood, he was one afternoon alone, musing within himself why it was just as impossible for him then to recall a distinct remembrance of the world, as formerly it had been to feel a presage of this poetic place of sojourn,—when all at once a post-horn seemed to sound in the distance, and the rattle of carriage-wheels to make themselves heard. "How strangely," said he to himself, "does a faint gleam, a slight reminiscence of earth, break upon my delight—rendering me melancholy and dejected! Then, do I lack anything here? Is my happiness still incomplete?"

The beautiful women returned. "What do you wish for?" said they, in a tone of concern; "you seem sad."

"You will laugh," replied Lewis; "yet grant me one favour more. In that other life I had a friend, whom I now but faintly remember: he is ill, I think; restore him by your skill."

"Your wish is already gratified," said they.

"But," said Lewis, "vouchsafe me two questions."

"Speak!"

"Does no gleam of love fall on this wondrous world? Does no friendship perambulate these bowers? I thought the morning blush of spring-love would be eternal here, which in that other life is too prone to be extinguished, and which men afterwards speak of as of a fable. To confess to you the truth, I feel an unspeakable yearning after those sensations."

"Then you long for earth again?"

"Oh, never!" cried Lewis; "for in that cold earth I used to sigh for friendship and for love, and they came not near me. The longing for those feelings had to supply the place of those feelings themselves; and for that reason I turned my aspirations hitherward, and hoped here to find every thing in the most beautiful harmony."

"Fool!" said the venerable woman: "so on earth you sighed for earth, and knew not what you did in wishing to be here; you have overshot your desires, and substituted phantasies for the sensations of mortals."

"Then who are ye?" cried Lewis, astounded.

"We are the old fairies," said she, "of whom you surely must have heard long ago. If you ardently long for earth, you will return thither again. Our kingdom flourishes when mortals are shrouded in night; but their day is our night. Our sway is of ancient date, and will long endure. It abides invisibly among men—to your eye alone has it been revealed."

She turned away, and Lewis remembered that it was the same form which had resistlessly dragged him after it in his youth, and of which he felt a secret dread. He followed now also, crying, "No, I will not go back to earth! I will stay here!" "So, then," said he to himself, "I devined this lofty being even in my childhood! And so the solution of many a riddle, which we are too idle to investigate, may be within ourselves."

He went on much further than usual, till the fairy garden was soon left far behind him. He stood on a romantic mountain-range, where the ivy clambered in wild tresses up the rocks; cliff was piled on cliff, and awe and grandeur seemed to hold universal sway. Then there came a wandering stranger to him, who accosted him kindly, and addressed him thus:—"Glad I am, after all, to see you again."

"I know you not," said Lewis.

"That may well be," replied the other; "but once you thought you knew me well. I am your late sick friend."

"Impossible! you are quite a stranger to me!"

"Only," said the stranger, "because to-day you see me for the first time in my true form: till now you only found in me a reflection of yourself. You are right too in remaining here; for there is no love, no friendship—not here, I mean, where all illusion vanishes."

Lewis sat down and wept.

"What ails you?" said the stranger.

"That it is you—you who were the friend of my youth: is not that mournful enough? Oh, come back with me to our dear, dear earth, where we shall know each other once more under illusive forms—where there exists the superstition of friendship! What am I doing here?"

"What will that avail?" answered the stranger. "You will want to be back again; earth is not bright enough for you: the flowers are too small for you, the song too suppressed. Colour there, cannot emerge so brilliantly from the shade; flowers there are of small comfort, and so prone to fade; the little birds think of their death, and sing in modest constraint: but here every thing is on a scale of grandeur."

"Oh, I will be contented!" cried Lewis, as the tears gushed profusely from his eyes. "Do but come back with me, and be my friend once more; let us leave this desert, this glittering misery!"

Thus saying, he opened his eyes, for some one was shaking him roughly. Over him leant the friendly but pale face of his once sick friend. "But are you dead?" cried Lewis.

"Recovered am I, wicked sleeper," he replied. "Is it thus you visit your sick friend? Come along with me; my carriage is waiting there, and a thunder-storm is rising."

Lewis rose: in his sleep he had glided off the trunk of the tree; his friend's letter lay open beside him. "So am I really on the earth again?" he exclaimed with joy; "really? and is this no new dream?"

"You will not escape from earth," answered his friend with a smile; and both were locked in heart-felt embraces.

"How happy I am," said Lewis, "that I have you once more, that I feel as I used to do, and that you are well again!"

"Suddenly," replied his friend, "I felt ill; and as suddenly I was well again. So I wished to go to you, and do away with the alarm that my letter must have caused you; and here, half-way, I find you asleep."

"I do not deserve your love at all," said Lewis.

"Why?"

"Because I just now doubted of your friendship."

"But only in sleep."

"It would be strange enough though," said Lewis, "if there really were such things as fairies."

"There are such, of a certainty," replied the other; "but it is all a fable, that their whole pleasure is to make men happy. They plant those wishes in our bosoms which we ourselves do not know of; those over-wrought pretensions—that super-human covetousness of super-human gifts; so that in our desponding delirium we afterwards despise the beautiful earth with all its glorious stores."

Lewis answered with a pressure of the hand.

THE ELVES.

WHERE is Maria, our child?" asked the father.

"She is playing on the green," replied the mother, "with our neighbour's son."

"Do not let them run away," said the father anxiously; "they are so thoughtless."

The mother attended to the wants of the little ones, and gave them their supper.

"The weather is hot, mother," said the boy; and the little maiden longed exceedingly to have some red cherries.

"Be careful, child," said the mother; "do not run too far from the house, or into the wood; your father and I are going into the field."

"Oh, do not be anxious on that account," was the prompt reply of young Andrew, "for we are all afraid of the wood; we will remain here sitting at home, where we are near to the men."

The mother went in, and soon returned with the father. They closed their cottage, and turned towards the fields to look after the peasants, and to see the hay-harvest in the meadows.

Their dwelling was situated on a little green eminence, fenced round by an ornamental hedge, which enclosed a fruit and flower garden; the town lay a little lower down; and still further there rose in the distance the towers of the baronial castle. Martin rented a large farm of the lord, the proprietor, and lived in a happy state of contentment with his wife and only child, as he was enabled, year by year, to lay by something in reserve for the future, with the prospect of becoming one day himself a man of property; for through his toil and industry the land was fruitful, and the Count did not oppress him with undue exactions.

As he was walking towards the fields with his wife, he gazed joyously around, and said, "How is it, Bridget, that the country about here is so different from that in which we formerly lived? Here it is so green and verdant; the whole town is beautified with thickly planted fruit-trees; the soil teems with rich vegetation and shrubs; all the houses are gay and cleanly—the inhabitants prosperous; indeed, it would appear to me that the woods here are more majestic, and the sky more blue; and as far as the eye can scan, we have pleasure in beholding the bountiful earth."

"But," said Brigitta, "to pass over to the other side of the river is to migrate into quite another region, every thing there wears so gloomy and withered an aspect; but as for our own hamlet, every traveller confesses it to be the prettiest in the whole district."

"Come, then, to the fir-plantation," answered her husband; "look back and see how dark and dreary that spot seems in the distance, in the midst of such a gay and animated landscape; the dusky huts behind the dark firs; those detached buildings fallen into ruinous heaps; and even the very stream flowing onwards so sadly and sluggishly."

"That is true," said she, as they both stood still to gaze upon the scene. "As often as one approaches the spot, one becomes sad and sorrowful, one knows not why."

"Who can the people really be? and why should they keep themselves at such a distance from all the neighbourhood, avoiding any intercourse with us, as though they were inwardly conscious of deeds of darkness?"

"They are poor folk," said the young farmer; "seemingly of a gipsy-tribe, who rob and pilfer at a distance off, and make this spot perhaps their head-quarters: I wonder only that the baron allows them to remain."

"Possibly," said the woman kindly and compassionately, "they are poor people, ashamed of their poverty; for, to speak the truth, we cannot lay any crime, or even any trivial injury, to their charge; still it is remarkable that they never go to church; and how they contrive to subsist is strange enough, for their little garden, in itself a perfect wilderness, cannot support them, and they have no pasture-land."

"God only knows," continued Martin, as they proceeded on their way—"God only knows what they do; this at least is certain, that they hold no intercourse; no stranger ever comes from, or goes to them; for the spot where they dwell is bewitched and under ban, so that the boldest young townsmen would hardly venture into it."

This conversation continued through their walk to the fields.

That dark district of which they spoke lay beyond the town in a hollow that was surrounded on all sides by firs; there appeared to be a hut, and several domestic buildings fast falling to decay. Smoke was seldom seen to curl from it, still less frequently were any human beings visible; at times some persons, led on by curiosity to venture somewhat nearer, had seen on the rising ground in front of the hut frightful old women, clad in uncouth rags, dandling equally frightful and dirty children on their laps; black dogs prowled about continually before the stream; and in the evening a monster of a man, whom no one knew, passed over the bridge, and disappeared into the hut; then several figures, like dim shadows, flitted along in the darkness, and danced round about a fire which was heaped up on the earth: this gloomy sport, the dark firs, and the ruinous huts, formed a most singular contrast to the gay green landscape, the clear white houses of the town, and the splendid new castle.

The two children had eaten up all their fruit, and then began to run races; and the little buoyant Maria outran, on each occasion, the tardy Andrew.

"That's no proof of your skill," he cried; "come, let us try a longer distance, and then we'll see who shall be the conqueror."

"As you please," said the little Maria; "only we must not run towards the stream."

"No," said Andrew; "but at the summit of that hill stands a large pear-tree, about a quarter of a mile off. I will run to the left past the fir-plantation, and you can go to the right through the fields; and we shall not know, till we meet, which of us is the fastest runner."

"Good," said Maria, immediately starting off; "we shall not hinder each other by going the same way, and our father says it is just the same distance to the top of the hill, whether we go on this side, or by the gipsy-huts."

Andrew had already started off, and Maria, who ran towards the right, saw him no more.

"How very stupid he is!" said she to herself; "for if I could only summon up courage enough to run over the bridge by the hut, and then again out across the yard, I should certainly get there much sooner than he will." She was already standing facing the stream and the fir-hill. "Shall I?—No, it's too terrible." A little white dog stood on the other side, keeping up a loud and continued bark at her. In her fright the little animal appeared a perfect monster, and she sprang back trembling. "Oh dear," said she, "Andrew has by this time got such a long distance before me, while I'm stopping here to consider." The little dog still barked on; and as she looked at it more attentively, it no longer struck her as being so terrible, but, on the contrary, she was quite charmed with it. It had a red collar, to which was affixed a tiny glittering bell; and as often as it raised its head and shook it, while barking, the tinkling noise it produced was to her ears most musical. "Oh, I'll venture," cried little Maria; "I'll run as fast as I can, and I shall soon be on the other side; they surely can't eat me entirely." With this the young courageous child sprang on the bridge, and quickly passed the little dog, who immediately ceased his barking to fawn upon her. And now she was standing on the dread spot; and the black firs, that were thickly grouped together, shut out from her view the home of her fathers, and the rest of the pretty landscape. But how amazed was she at the spectacle before her!

Around her was a most brilliant expanse of flower-garden, in which roses, lilies, and tulips, intertwining with one another, shone in all those gorgeous colours in which Nature loves to garb her bright creations; blue and golden butterflies fluttered about from blossom to blossom, glittering as the sunbeams danced upon their fairy livery; birds, whose plumage borrowed the tints of the rainbow, and whose tiny throats quivered again as each note swelled forth more delicious than the last, hung on cages and on glittering perches; children in short white garments, with golden hair hanging in luxuriant curls, and clear blue eyes, sported about, some leading little pet-lambs, others feeding the birds; some culled the fragrant flowers, and wove garlands for one another; others were tasting the delicious fruits—pears, large clusters of grapes, and red apricots: no hut was visible, but a large handsome mansion, with gates of brass and wood of exquisite workmanship, towered on high in the middle of this paradise. Maria was rivetted to the spot; indeed, the beauty of the garden and the magnificence of the mansion had taken so firm a hold on her fancy, that some moments elapsed ere she recovered her surprise even partially. But, as it had ever been the study of her parents to enable her to appear composed, whatever novelty might offer itself to her, she approached fearlessly the nearest child, and with extended hand wished it good day.

"So you have come to see us then at last," said the little girl; "I have often seen you dancing and sporting without there, but you were afraid of our little dog."

"Then you are not gipsies and strollers, as Andrew says you are. Ah, truly, he's very stupid, and talks a great deal too much."

"Only stop with us here," said her new friend; "you shall be so happy."

"But we are running for a wager, and—"

"Oh, you'll get back to him very soon; take some of our fruit." Maria tasted it, and it proved so delicious to her palate, that she declared she had never before eaten any like it; and from this moment Andrew, the race, and the prohibition of her parents, were altogether forgotten. Then a more elderly female, whose dress was still more beautiful than any thing Maria had hitherto seen, stepped forward, and made inquiry about the stranger-child.

"Most beautiful lady," said Maria, "I ran in here by accident, and now they wish to keep me here."

"You know, Zerina," said the beautiful lady, "that there is a short time only allowed her; besides, you should first of all have asked my permission."

"I thought," said the child, "as she had been allowed to cross the bridge, that I might keep her; we have often seen her running about in the fields, and you have yourself been pleased with her gay and spirited air; and she will be obliged to leave us soon enough."

"No, I will stay here," said Maria, "it is so charming here; and I find the best things to play with here are strawberries and pears; it is not half so fine outside."

The golden-dressed lady now retired, smiling; and many of the children playfully sported about Maria—laughing, and inviting her to join their dance. Some brought her a pet-lamb or wonderful toys, others brought novel instruments and played and sang to her; but she preferred the little playfellow, her first friend, for she was the most gentle and good-natured of all. The little Maria constantly cried out, "I will always stop here, and you shall be my sisters;" at which all the children smiled and embraced her.

"Now then," said Zerina, "we shall have a fine game;" and running hastily into the palace, she returned with a little golden basket, in which were very fine glittering seeds. She took some in her delicate little fingers, and strewed the grains upon the green turf; and immediately they saw the grass heave and float about, as it were in waves; and after a few moments, beautiful rose-trees sprang from the ground, grew rapidly up, and suddenly burst themselves into their full beauty, exhaling the sweetest odours that floated round them in the air. Maria herself took some of the seed, and scattered it; and immediately there sprang up at her feet white lilies and cloves of every hue. At a motion of Zerina's, these flowers all disappeared, and others still more beautiful sprang up in their place.

"Now," said Zerina to the astonished child, "prepare yourself for something still greater." She then placed two pine-cones in the ground, and stamped on them violently with her feet: instantly two green shrubs stood before them. "Grasp me firmly," said she; and Maria threw her arms around her delicate waist, and felt herself rising up into the air; for the trees grew beneath them with surprising quickness. The tall pines swayed to and fro at the will of the breeze, and the two children, locked in each other's arms, kissed each other, while floating backwards in the red clouds of evening. The other little ones clambered up and down the stems of the trees with elastic step, and if by chance one impeded the progress of another, the whole number raised a loud shout of laughter. Maria at length grew terrified; and at some mystic words uttered by the little one, the trees sank again gently into the earth, setting them down in the spot from which they had raised them up. They then went through the brazen gate of the palace; here many women, some younger, some older, all of that degree of beauty that no pencil could portray, were seated round a circular hall, feasting on the most delicious fruits, and listening to a concert of most delightful and invisible harmony.

Round the ceiling of the hall, which was studded with gold and gems, representing the starry sphere, were palm-trees, plants, and shrubs, between which children clambered and sported in most graceful groups. The figures varied and glowed in more burning colours, according to the tones of the music. At one time, green and blue, sparkling like clear rays of light, prevailed. Then the colours paled away, and purple and gold burst forth: then the naked children, amid the fanciful clusters that the different flowers wove, seemed to be full of life, and to inhale and exhale breath with their ruby-red lips, so that their beautiful white teeth were visible, and the bright glances of their clear blue eyes were seen from beneath their dark fringe. From the hall, some steps of marble and jasper led into a large subterraneous chamber. The floor of this room was covered with vast heaps of gold and silver; diamonds, pearls, and gems of all colours dazzled the eyes; large deep vessels stood around the walls, all filled with precious stones, and gold wrought into curious devices, and mystic characters, with such ingenuity as no artisan, however skilful, could form. Many little dwarfs were occupied in sorting the precious heaps, and in filling vessels with the riches; others, with crooked legs and long red noses, dragged in heavy sacks, as millers carry their corn, and bending forward, poured out the grains on the earth: then they jumped to the right and left, and seized the treasures as they rolled away; and it often happened, that through their zeal and eagerness to recover them, they rolled one against the other and fell heavily on the ground. They made frightful faces whenever Maria laughed at their grotesque manner and hideous deformity. Behind sat a little old man, wrinkled by age, whom Maria saluted very respectfully, but he merely bent his head in answer to her deferential salutation: he had a sceptre in his right hand, and a crown encircled his brow; all the other dwarfs seemed to look up to him as their chief and superior; his fiat was instantly obeyed, though his commands were given by signs and motions.

"What is the matter now?" said he in a surly tone, as the children approached nearer to him. The timid Maria kept silence, but her little playfellow answered, that they had only come to see the chamber.

"What," said the old man peevishly, "will there always be these childish freaks? is there never to be an end to this idling?" He then turned his attention again to his work, and ordered the pieces of gold to be weighed and collected together. Some of the dwarfs he despatched in different directions; many, too, he scolded right heartily.

At length Maria's curiosity got the better of her fear, and in an eager manner she said to her little friend, "Who is that old man?"

"Our metal-prince," said the little one, as they left the chamber.

They soon found themselves in the open air, by the side of a large lake; still no sun had appeared hitherto, nor could they see any sky above them. Here a little boat received them, and Zerina took the helm and steered their course very skilfully. They floated rapidly down the lake, and when they had arrived at about the middle, Maria saw that a thousand canals, streams, and rivulets, branched off in every direction from this miniature sea.

"These waters," said the bright-beaming child, "flow exactly under your garden, irrigating the soil around; and hence it is that your flowers bloom more beautifully and more fragrantly than others, and that your fruits are so superior in flavour; from this stream we launch into the great canal." On a sudden there rose to the surface from every branch of these blue waters a countless number of beautiful children, swimming and plunging up and down among the mimic waves; many wore graceful coronets of flags and water-lilies, glittering as though with gems from the drops of spray; others waved branches of red and white coral; others again carried curious horns, tastefully decorated with blue ribbons; then several beautiful women rose to the surface, swimming about among the group of younger naiads, and at times the children might be seen hanging on the necks of the women, covering them with kisses. They all saluted the stranger party; and through the midst of this grouped assemblage the little barque floated on from the main stream into a smaller rivulet, which became gradually narrower and narrower, and at the same time the depth of water diminished till the little boat grounded on the shore. Here the group of naiads, who had accompanied their tiny vessel, took leave of them; and Zerina knocked against the rock, which immediately opened like a magnificent doorway to admit them, and a female figure, of a glowing red colour, assisted them to disembark.

"Is all going on merrily?" inquired Zerina.

"Ay, merrily indeed," replied the other; "you are ever on the wing; no cloud of sorrow ever darkens your brow, but the sunshine of happiness always lights up those features of yours, curling that lip with a smile of joy."

They mounted a winding staircase, and Maria suddenly found herself in a most glittering hall, so that on entering, her eyes were dazzled with the brilliant lights that burst in their full splendour upon her. Deep-red tapestry covered the walls with a brilliant glow; and as soon as her eye was familiar with the unusual halo that invested the whole chamber, she perceived figures moving gracefully up and down in the tapestry, of such exquisite beauty and delicate symmetry of form, that her imagination could not paint any thing more lovely. Their bodies appeared to be formed of crystal of a reddish tint, and so transparent, that one might see the life-blood circulating in their veins. They smiled at the stranger-child, and bowed courteously: but when the little Maria wished to approach nearer, Zerina held her back forcibly, exclaiming, "You will burn yourself, little Maria; what you are gazing upon is all fire."

Maria perceived the heat, and said to Zerina, "Why don't these charming creatures come out and play with us?"

"It is impossible," answered Zerina; "as you live in air, so they live in fire; if you were to be taken out of your peculiar element, you would languish and droop; in the same manner, if you were to transport them into your element, they would perish."

"Only look," said Maria, "how happy and joyous they seem; listen how they shout and sing."

"Below," said her little friend, "the fire-streams spread in every direction throughout the whole earth, imparting heat to the vegetation, and ripening the seed, till it shoots upward into a fruitful plant: hence you have your flowers and fruits. These fire-streams go side by side with the water-streams; and to their mutual agency you owe all the herbage of your pasture-land, all the beauties of your flower-garden, all the luscious produce of your orchards: they are your great benefactors: without them your present fruitful land would be a desolate wilderness; your flower-gardens overrun with noxious weeds, and your orchard-trees blighted and dying away. In consequence of such benefits resulting from them, they are ever active, ever happy. But this heat is too great for a child of air; come, let us return to the garden."

There had been a great change in the atmosphere; the moonshine lay on all the flowers, the birds were hushed, and the children were slumbering on the greensward.

"Happy, holy calmness," thought Maria; "Peace has certainly chosen her retreat in these lovely regions; Contentment is linked with her; and wherever they roam hand in hand, all is joy, all is tranquillity."

But did Maria slumber? No; she and her little friend felt no weariness; they roamed through the live-long summer night amid the groves and sylvan avenues, prattling in youthful eloquence on the wondrous spectacles that were before them. At day-break they refreshed themselves with fruits and milk; and Maria said to her little companion, "Let us go out to the fir-trees yonder; it will be a change for us."

"With all my heart," said Zerina; "then you can see our sentries at the same time, and they will be sure to please you. They take their stand upon the rampart between the trees."

They walked on through the flower-garden, through beautiful thickets peopled with nightingales; then they mounted the vine-hills, and following the course of a clear crystal stream in its winding channel, they arrived at the firs, and the high ground that formed the boundary of the district.

"How is it," said Maria, "that we have had such a long walk to reach the firs here within, when the circuit on the outside is so small?"

"I cannot say how it is," said the other; "but so it is."

They ascended the hill to the dark firs, and the cold breeze blew upon them from without. A dark cloud, extending far across the horizon, seemed to hang over the whole district; and above them stood wondrous forms with whitened faces, not unlike the hideous heads of the white owl, and clad in folding mantles of coarse and shaggy wool, fanning themselves from time to time with bats' wings.

"How I long to laugh!" said Maria; "but yet I'm afraid."

"Those," said Zerina, "are our careful watchmen; they stand here in order to strike awe and consternation into any that may venture to approach, and to deter any curious folks from getting an insight into our regions. You see they are wrapped up closely, and protected from the weather; that is because it is raining and freezing without; but neither snow, nor wind, nor hail, can penetrate here within: here is eternal spring—here the bright garb of summer never fades. Our sentinels are very devoted to us; so that, although they are seldom relieved, yet they willingly keep watch at their posts."

"But who are you?" at length asked Maria; "have you any names by which we may call you?"

"We are called Elves," said her little friend; "they speak well of us too in the world, as I understand."

On retracing their way into the flower-garden they heard a great shout in the meadows, which grew louder as they approached nearer to the spot.

"A large beautiful bird has arrived," shouted the children, as they followed the flight of the majestic creature, as it sailed through the air: all pushed on hastily in its track, and Maria and her young friend could see young and old all pressing forward to the spot with hasty steps: songs of rejoicing were heard on every side, and a sweet strain of triumphal music from within came floating through the air to them. They entered the hall, and saw the whole circuit filled with the elfin-tribe, all gazing up at a vast bird of beautiful plumage, which was describing slowly many revolutions around the dome of the building. The music burst forth more gaily than ever, and the colours and lights in the ceiling revolved more rapidly, and shot forth again in brighter colours and more fantastic groups. At length the music died away softly, and the majestic bird fluttered down upon a splendid throne, suspended mid-way from the ceiling, beneath the window which lighted the apartment from above. His plumage was a mixture of purple and green, through which the most brilliant golden streaks were to be seen; on his head was a clear, shining coronet of feathers, glittering as though it were studded with precious stones; his beak was of a deep red tint, and his legs of bright blue. When he rose again into the air, all the colours blended together so uniquely that the eye was perfectly enraptured with the gorgeous galaxy of magnificence which it presented. But soon he opened his brilliant beak, and warbled sweet melody more delicious than that of the nightingale: his song swelled forth and grew more powerful, gushing out like lovely rays of light, till the whole assembly shed tears of delight.

When he had ceased his song, all present bowed low before him; again he flew around the cupola in circles, and sailing swiftly through the entrance, soared again up to the blue sky, where he was soon lost to the eye, appearing for a time a mere bright speck upon the horizon.

"Why are you all so glad?" asked Maria, bending down to the beautiful child, who appeared to her smaller than the day before.

"The king is coming," answered the child; "many of us have never yet seen him; and wherever he goes, thither happiness and prosperity follow him. We have been eagerly longing for his presence for some time past, and looking forward to his coming as anxiously as you children of air look forward to spring and spring-flowers after a tedious winter. And now he has announced to us his approach through that beautiful and intelligent messenger, the Phœnix. He dwells afar off in Arabia, and there only appears one of the species at the same time in the world: when he grows old, he builds himself a nest of balm and incense, and, setting it on fire, burns to death, singing at the same time as beautifully as you have heard him to-day; then from the odoriferous ashes he rises again into a new existence, and soars aloft with fresh vigour and beauty. But now, dear little Maria, you must go; the period of your stay with us has expired: when the king comes, no stranger must dwell with us, nor even see him once."

"But he will soon leave you again," said Maria fondly, "and then I will return to you, and never quit you."

"It cannot be," answered her friend; "the king will stay here twenty years, or even longer; but he will make every thing change for you for the better: there will be no storms to harm your crops, no hail to destroy the early blossoms of your fruit-trees, no floods to overflow your pasture-land."

Here the golden-dressed lady stepped up to Maria.

"You must indeed go," she said; "though we must all be sorry that the time for your visit has elapsed. Take this ring, and wear it always in remembrance of your elfin friends; but remember, when you quit this spot, never to mention to any living soul the place where you have been staying—never to reveal aught of the wonders you have been permitted to see here. Should you ever be tempted to disclose this great secret, beware of the evil results that must ensue—they will fall heavily upon you, as well as upon us: we shall be obliged to quit the spot for ever, and your fruitful fields will be transformed to a desolate wilderness. Come, kiss your little playfellow once more, and then farewell. Remember my last caution."

Maria bade them a sad farewell, and retraced her steps to her own home. As she was crossing the bridge, the little white dog barked at her again, as he had done when she first approached, and shook his little bell. She crossed over, and began for the first time to think of her parents, and the happy home she had deserted through her disobedience. She pictured to herself the anguish of a loving mother, the silent though deep sorrow of her father, the alarm of the whole hamlet, as soon as the news of her disappearance was noised abroad. She then thought of Andrew's glee when he reached the winning-post, and how his eager eye was turned in the direction that she had agreed to come by, expecting to see her downcast look. She then called to mind the caution she had received not to make the communication known, for fear of the evil results: "however," said she, "if I were to tell them, and insist upon the truth of my statement, I should find no one to credit my story." As she was indulging in her reveries, two men passed her and saluted her.

"What a pretty girl!" said they, "where can such a beautiful creature have come from?"

She quickened her pace; but on looking round her she was struck with amazement: the flowers that she had left yesterday so lovely and fragrant were dead, and their sweet odour was gone; the trees, yesterday so verdant, were now leafless and withered; new buildings had sprung up around her—indeed it would seem that some mystic agency had been at work on the spot—that the spirit of enchantment had passed over the district, and wrought a change indeed.

"Then it must all be a dream," said Maria, rubbing her eyes as though wakening up from a deep slumber; "it must all be a dream; and the strange and wonderful sights I have seen must be the effects of fancy.—No, it certainly is reality, and I am standing near the bridge where our house stood yesterday."

She proceeded on to her home, perfectly bewildered by the change that a day had wrought; and, with a feeling of embarrassment that can be more naturally conceived than portrayed, she opened the door, and saw her father sitting behind a table, at which were seated a lady and a youth, both of whom Maria fancied she had never seen before.

"Father, dear father," cried Maria, gazing round her with a look of deep amazement, "say, where is my mother?"

The lady immediately rose from her seat, and, rushing towards her, looked at her with an earnestness of feeling that itself would have told the grand secret, that it was no other than her mother, and exclaimed, "Yes, you are,—no;" and then she seemed for a minute to distrust her powers of recollection,—"yes, you are our dear, lost Maria;" and the mother and daughter were instantly clasped in each other's arms.

Still Maria scarcely seemed to credit her senses.—"How," said she to herself, "can one single day have produced this change?—not only are the buildings altered, and the general appearance of the country, but my mother also wears a more aged appearance: can this be the effect of one little day?"

"Who, then, is that young man?" she inquired of her mother, who was by this time fully satisfied of her daughter's identity.

"That," replied Martin, "is your old playfellow Andrew; you surely have not entirely forgotten him; though certainly a lapse of seven years must have made some little change in all of us. Seven years have now passed away since you disappeared so suddenly; and so many continued years of sorrow and anxiety rarely, I trust, fall to the lot of any mortals. Where have you been this long time? Why did we not hear of you?—for, although we all rejoice exceedingly to receive you again, still you must satisfy us with the cause of your disappearance, and with an account of what has befallen you in your separation from us."

"Seven years!" exclaimed Maria; "seven years do you say have passed?"

"Yes," said Andrew, "it is so indeed. I arrived first at the pear-tree, and that was seven years ago; and as you have only this moment returned, I think I can claim the prize as victor."

"You remember," said her father, "our leaving you with Andrew, while we went into the harvest-field: on our return you were missing. Andrew told us the story of the race, and that he saw no more of you after the start. We searched diligently for you, and everybody through the hamlet offered their assistance to endeavour to discover you. But our attempts were fruitless, and we returned to our home broken-hearted, having lost all we prized on earth, our only child. But tell us, how did you contrive to lose yourself?—we thought you were so well acquainted with the whole district as to render it a matter of impossibility. Where have you been? how have you been living?"

These questions embarrassed the poor Maria in no slight degree: for how could she tell of the wondrous elves—of her dear little playfellow Zerina—of the gold and precious stones, the lovely fruits, the variegated flower-beds, the streams of gentle water, the children sporting in the rivulets? How could she describe the crystal fire-beings—the beautifully-feathered phœnix, the palace of the elf-king, with its brazen-wrought gates, and its highly decorated ceilings? How could she trace to their imaginations the hideous form of the metal-prince, and the strange figures of the sentinels on the rampart? But even if she had been able to depict all the spectacles she had witnessed in their proper colours, would such a strange story have appeared credible, or even plausible? But she had not forgotten the last parting admonition of the golden lady—no, it was still ringing in her ears—"tell not aught of the things you have seen or heard; evil results will happen to you and us:" and then the smiling features of her little elfin friend were visible to her mind's eye,—and could she harm so dear a head? No, it was not in her disposition to injure any one, even should it not be likely to draw down danger upon herself.

"Where have you been?" again asked Martin.

"As soon as I started off in the race," said Maria, "I was snatched up, and carried off to a distance. I did not know the country," she continued, "and could not get any communication to you: I seized the first opportunity to make my escape, and have once more reached you."