"Yes, a most undoubted—copy!"

And here their conversation ended; for at that moment the little Moldavian Prince Jerkin made his way through the crowd, with his snuff-box as usual in his hand, and hurried up to Flemming whom he had known in Heidelberg. He was eager to let every one know that he spoke English, and in his haste began by making a mistake.

"Good bye! Good bye! Mr. Flemming!" said he, instead of good evening. "I am ravished to see you in Ems. Nice place;—all that there is of most nice. I drink my water and am good! Do you not think the Frau Kranich has a very beautiful leather?"

He meant skin. Flemming laughed outright; but it was not perceived by the Prince, because at that moment he was pushed aside, in the rush of a gallopade, and Flemming beheld his face no more. At the same moment the Baron introduced a friend of his, who also spoke English and said;

"You will sup with me to-night. I have some Rhine-wine, which will be a seduction to you."

Soon after, the Baron stood with an impassioned, romantic lady leaning on his arm, examining a copy of Raphael's Fornarina.

"Ach! I wish I had been the Fornarina," sighed the impassioned, romantic lady.

"Then, my dear Madam," replied the Baron, "I wish I had been Raphael."

And so likewise said to himself a very tall man with fiery red hair, and fancy whiskers, who was waltzing round and round in one spot, and in a most extraordinary waistcoat; thus representing a fiery, floating-light, to warn men of the hidden rocks, on which the breath of vanity drives them shipwreck. At length, his partner, tired of spinning, sank upon a sofa, like a child's top, when it reels and falls.

"You do not like the waltz?" said an elderly French gentleman, remarking the expression of Flemming's countenance.

"O yes; among the figurantes of the Opera. But I confess, it sometimes makes me shudder to see a young rake clasp his arms round the waist of a pure and innocent girl. What would you say, were you to see him sitting on a sofa with his arms round your wife?"

"Mere prejudice of education," replied the French gentleman. "I know that situation. I have read all about it in the Bibliotheque de Romans Choisis!"

And merrily went the dance; and bright eyes and flushed cheeks were not wanting among the dancers;

"And they waxed red, and waxed warm,

And rested, panting, arm in arm,"

and the Strauss-walzes sounded pleasantly in the ears of Flemming, who, though he never danced, yet, like Henry of Ofterdingen, in the Romance of Novalis, thought to music. The wheeling waltz set the wheels of his fancy going. And thus the moments glided on, and the footsteps of Time were not heard amid the sound of music and voices.

But suddenly this scene of gayety was interrupted. The door opened wide; and the short figure of a gray-haired old man presented itself, with a flushed countenance and wild eyes. He was but half-dressed, and in his hand held a silver candlestick without a light. A sheet was wound round his head, like a turban; and he tottered forward with a vacant, bewildered look, exclaiming;

"I am Mahomet, the king of the Jews!"

At the same moment he fell in a swoon; and was borne out of the room by the servants. Flemming looked at the lady of the festival, and she was deadly pale. For a moment all was confusion; and the dance and the music stopped. Theimpression produced on the company was at once ludicrous and awful. They tried in vain to rally. The whole society was like a dead body, from which the spirit has departed. Ere long the guests had all dispersed, and left the lady of the mansion to her mournful, expiring lamps, and still more mournful reflections.

"Truly," said Flemming, to the Baron, as they wended their way homeward, "this seems not like reality; but like one of the sharp contrasts we find in novels. Who shall say, after this, that there is not more romance in real life, than we find written in books!"

"Not more romance," said the Baron, "but a different romance."

A still more tragic scene had been that evening enacted in Heidelberg. Just as the sun set, two female figures walked along the romantic woodland path-way, leading to the Angel's Meadow, a little green opening on the brow of one of the high hills, which see themselves in the Neckar and hear the solemn bells of Kloster-Neuburg. The evening shadows were falling broad and long; and the cuckoo began to sing.

"Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" said the eldest of the two figures, repeating an old German popular rhyme,

'Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

Tell me true,

Tell me fair and fine,

How long must I unmarried pine!'"

It was the voice of an evil spirit, that spoke in the person of Madeleine; and the pale and shrinking figure, that walked by her side, and listened to those words, was Emma of Ilmenau. A young man joined them, where the path turns into the thick woodlands; and they disappeared among the shadowy branches. It was the Polish Count.

The forget-me-nots looked up to heaven with their meek blue eyes, from their home in the Angel's Meadow. Calmly stood the mountain of All-Saints, in its majestic, holy stillness;—the river flowed so far below, that the murmur of itswaters was not heard;—there was not a sigh of the evening wind among the leaves,—not a sound upon the earth nor in the air;—and yet that night there fell a star from heaven!



CHAPTER X. THE PARTING.



It was now that season of the year, which an old English writer calls the amiable month of June, and at that hour of the day, when, face to face, the rising moon beholds the setting sun. As yet the stars were few in heaven. But, after the heat of the day, the coolness and the twilight descended like a benediction upon the earth, by all those gentle sounds attended, which are the meek companions of the night.

Flemming and the Baron had passed the afternoon at the Castle. They had rambled once more together, and for the last time, over the magnificent ruin. On the morrow they were to part, perhaps forever. The Baron was going to Berlin, to join his sister; and Flemming, drivenforward by the restless spirit within him, longed once more for a change of scene, and was going to the Tyrol and Switzerland. Alas! he never said to the passing hour; "Stay, for thou art fair!" but reached forward into the dark future, with unsatisfied longings and aimless desires, that were never still.

As the day was closing, they sat down on the terrace of Elisabeth's Garden. The sun had set beyond the blue Alsatian hills; and on the valley of the Rhine fell the purple mist, like the mantle of the departing prophet from his fiery chariot. Over the castle walls, and the trees of the garden, rose the large moon; and between the contending daylight and moonlight there were as yet no shadows. But at length the shadows came; transparent and faint outlines, that deepened into form. In the valley below only the river gleamed, like steel; and here and there the lamps were lighted in the town. Solemnly stood the leafy lindentrees in the garden near them, their trunks in darkness and their summits bronzed with moonlight; and in his niche in the great round tower, overhung with ivy, like a majestic phantom, stood the gray statue of Louis, with his venerable beard, and shirt of mail, and flowing mantle; and the mild, majestic countenance looked forth into the silent night, as the countenance of a seer, who reads the stars. At intervals the wind of the summer night passed through the ruined castle and the trees, and they sent forth a sound as if nature were sighing in her dreams; and for a moment overhead the broad leaves gently clashed together, like brazen cymbals, with a tinkling sound; and then all was still, save the sweet, passionate song of nightingales, that nowhere upon earth sing more sweetly than in the gardens of Heidelberg Castle.

The hour, the scene, and the near-approaching separation of the two young friends, had filled their hearts with a pleasant, though at the same time not painless excitement. They had been conversing about the magnificent old ruin, and the ages in which it had been built, and the vicissitudesof time and war, that had battered down its walls, and left it "tenantless, save to the crannying wind."

"How sorrowful and sublime is the face of that statue yonder," said Flemming. "It reminds me of the old Danish hero Beowulf; for careful, sorrowing, he seeth in his son's bower the wine-hall deserted, the resort of the wind, noiseless; the knight sleepeth; the warrior lieth in darkness; there is no noise of the harp, no joy in the dwellings, as there was before."

"Even as you say," replied the Baron; "but it often astonishes me, that, coming from that fresh green world of yours beyond the sea, you should feel so much interest in these old things; nay, at times, seem so to have drunk in their spirit, as really to live in the times of old. For my part, I do not see what charm there is in the pale and wrinkled countenance of the Past, so to entice the soul of a young man. It seems to me like falling in love with one's grandmother. Give me the Present;—warm, glowing, palpitating with life. She is my mistress; and the Future stands waiting like my wife that is to be, for whom, to tell the truth, I care very little just now. Indeed, my friend, I wish you would take more heed of this philosophy of mine; and not waste the golden hours of youth in vain regrets for the past, and indefinite, dim longings for the future. Youth comes but once in a lifetime."

"Therefore," said Flemming; "let us so enjoy it as to be still young when we are old. For my part, I grow happier as I grow older. When I compare my sensations and enjoyments now, with what they were ten years ago, the comparison is vastly in favor of the present. Much of the fever and fretfulness of life is over. The world and I look each other more calmly in the face. My mind is more self-possessed. It has done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat and drenched by the rain of life."

"Now you speak like an old philosopher," answered the Baron, laughing. "But you deceive yourself. I never knew a more restless, feverishspirit than yours. Do not think you have gained the mastery yet. You are only riding at anchor here in an eddy of the stream; you will soon be swept away again in the mighty current and whirl of accident. Do not trust this momentary calm. I know you better than you know yourself. There is something Faust-like in you; you would fain grasp the highest and the deepest; and 'reel from desire to enjoyment, and in enjoyment languish for desire.' When a momentary change of feeling comes over you, you think the change permanent, and thus live in constant self-deception."

"I confess," said Flemming, "there may be some truth in what you say. There are times when my soul is restless; and a voice sounds within me, like the trump of the archangel, and thoughts that were buried, long ago, come out of their graves. At such times my favorite occupations and pursuits no longer charm me. The quiet face of Nature seems to mock me."

"There certainly are seasons," replied the Baron, "when Nature seems not to sympathizewith her beloved children. She sits there so eternally calm and self-possessed, so very motherly and serene, and cares so little whether the heart of her child breaks or not, that at times I almost lose my patience. About that, too, she cares so little, that, out of sheer obstinacy, I become good-humored again, and then she smiles."

"I think we must confess, however," continued Flemming, "that all this springs from our own imperfection, not from hers. How beautiful is this green world, which we inhabit! See yonder, how the moonlight mingles with the mist! What a glorious night is this! Truly every man has a Paradise around him until he sins, and the angel of an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden. And even then there are holy hours, when this angel sleeps, and man comes back, and, with the innocent eyes of a child, looks into his lost Paradise again,—into the broad gates and rural solitudes of Nature. I feel this often. We have much to enjoy in the quiet and retirement of ourown thoughts. Boisterous mirth and loud laughter are not my mood. I love that tranquillity of soul, in which we feel the blessing of existence, and which in itself is a prayer and a thanksgiving. I find, however, that, as I grow older, I love the country less, and the city more."

"Yes," interrupted the Baron; "and presently you will love the city less and the country more. Say at once, that you have an undefined longing for both; and prefer town or country, according to the mood you are in. I think a man must be of a very quiet and happy nature, who can long endure the country; and, moreover, very well contented with his own insignificant person, very self-complacent, to be continually occupied with himself and his own thoughts. To say the least, a city life makes one more tolerant and liberal in his judgment of others. One is not eternally wrapped up in self-contemplation; which, after all, is only a more holy kind of vanity."

In conversation like this, the hours glided away; till at length, from the Giant's Tower, the Castleclock struck twelve, with a sound that seemed to come from the Middle Ages. Like watchmen from their belfries the city clocks answered it, one by one. Then distant and muffled sounds were heard. Inarticulate words seemed to blot the foggy air, as if written on wet paper. These were the bells of Handschuhsheimer, and of other villages on the broad plain of the Rhine, and among the hills of the Odenwald; mysterious sounds, that seemed not of this world.

Beneath them, in the shadow of the hills, lay the valley, like a fathomless, black gulf; and above were the cloistered stars, that, nun-like, walk the holy aisles of heaven. The city was asleep in the valley below; all asleep and silent, save the clocks, that had just struck twelve, and the veering, golden weathercocks, that were swimming in the moonshine, like golden fishes, in a glass vase. And again the wind of the summer night passed through the old Castle, and the trees, and the nightingales recorded under the dark, shadowy leaves, and the heart of Flemming was full.

When he had retired to his chamber, a feeling of utter loneliness came over him. The night before one begins a journey is always a dismal night; for, as Byron says,

"In leaving even the most unpleasant people

And places, one keeps looking at the steeple!"

And how much more so when the place and people are pleasant; as was the case with those, that Flemming was now leaving. No wonder he was sad and sleepless. Thoughts came and went, and bright and gloomy fancies, and dreams and visions, and sweet faces looked under his closed eyelids, and vanished away, and came again, and again departed. He heard the clock strike from hour to hour, and said, "Another hour is gone." At length the birds began to sing; and ever and anon the cock crew. He arose, and looked forth into the gray dawn; and before him lay the city he was so soon to leave, all white and ghastly, like a city that had arisen from its grave.

"All things must change," said he to the Baron, as he embraced him, and held him by the hand. "Friends must be torn asunder, and swept along in the current of events, to see each other seldom, and perchance no more. For ever and ever in the eddies of time and accident we whirl away. Besides which, some of us have a perpetual motion in our wooden heads, as Wodenblock had in his wooden leg; and like him we travel on, without rest or sleep, and have hardly time to take a friend by the hand in passing; and at length are seen hurrying through some distant land, worn to a skeleton, and all unknown."



BOOK III.



Epigraph

"Take away the lights, too;

The moon lends me too much to find my fears;

And those devotions I am now to pay,

Are written in my heart, not in thy book;

And I shall read them there without a taper."



CHAPTER I. SUMMER-TIME.



They were right,—those old German Minnesingers,—to sing the pleasant summer-time! What a time it is! How June stands illuminated in the Calendar! The windows are all wide open; only the Venetian blinds closed. Here and there a long streak of sunshine streams in through a crevice. We hear the low sound of the wind among the trees; and, as it swells and freshens, the distant doors clap to, with a sudden sound. The trees are heavy with leaves; and the gardens full of blossoms, red and white. The whole atmosphere is laden with perfume and sunshine. The birds sing. The cock struts about, and crows loftily. Insects chirp in the grass. Yellow butter-cups stud the green carpet like golden buttons, and the red blossoms of the clover like rubies. The elm-trees reach their long, pendulous branches almost to the ground. White clouds sail aloft; and vapors fret the blue sky with silver threads. The white village gleams afar against the dark hills. Through the meadow winds the river,—careless, indolent. It seems to love the country, and is in no haste to reach the sea. The bee only is at work,—the hot and angry bee. All things else are at play; he never plays, and is vexed that any one should.

People drive out from town to breathe, and to be happy. Most of them have flowers in their hands; bunches of apple-blossoms, and still oftener lilacs. Ye denizens of the crowded city, how pleasant to you is the change from the sultry streets to the open fields, fragrant with clover-blossoms! how pleasant the fresh, breezy country air, dashed with brine from the meadows! howpleasant, above all, the flowers, the manifold, beautiful flowers!

It is no longer day. Through the trees rises the red moon, and the stars are scarcely seen. In the vast shadow of night, the coolness and the dews descend. I sit at the open window to enjoy them; and hear only the voice of the summer wind. Like black hulks, the shadows of the great trees ride at anchor on the billowy sea of grass. I cannot see the red and blue flowers, but I know that they are there. Far away in the meadow gleams the silver Charles. The tramp of horses' hoofs sounds from the wooden bridge. Then all is still, save the continuous wind of the summer night. Sometimes I know not if it be the wind or the sound of the neighbouring sea. The village clock strikes; and I feel that I am not alone.

How different is it in the city! It is late, and the crowd is gone. You step out upon the balcony, and lie in the very bosom of the cool, dewy night, as if you folded her garments about you. The whole starry heaven is spread out overhead. Beneath lies the public walk with trees, like a fathomless, black gulf, into whose silent darkness the spirit plunges and floats away, with some beloved spirit clasped in its embrace. The lamps are still burning up and down the long street. People go by, with grotesque shadows, now foreshortened and now lengthening away into the darkness and vanishing, while a new one springs up behind the walker, and seems to pass him on the sidewalk. The iron gates of the park shut with a jangling clang. There are footsteps, and loud voices;—a tumult,—a drunken brawl,—an alarm of fire;—then silence again. And now at length the city is asleep, and we can see the night. The belated moon looks over the roofs, and finds no one to welcome her. The moonlight is broken. It lies here and there in the squares, and the opening of streets,—angular, like blocks of white marble.

Under such a green, triumphal arch, O Reader! with the odor of flowers about thee, and the song of birds, shalt thou pass onward into the enchanted land, as through the Ivory Gate of dreams! And as a prelude and majestic march, one sweet human voice, I know not whose, but coming from the bosom of the Alps, sings this sublime ode, which the Alpine echoes repeat afar.

"Come, golden Evening! In the west

Enthrone the storm-dispelling sun,

And let the triple rainbow rest

O'er all the mountain tops;—'t is done;

The tempest ceases; bold and bright,

The rainbow shoots from hill to hill;

Down sinks the sun; on presses night;

Mont Blanc is lovely still!

"There take thy stand, my spirit;—spread

The world of shadows at thy feet;

And mark how calmly overhead,

The stars, like saints in glory, meet.

While, hid in solitude sublime,

Methinks I muse on Nature's tomb,

And hear the passing foot of Time

Step through the silent gloom.

"All in a moment, crash on crash,

From precipice to precipice,

An avalanche's ruins dash

Down to the nethermost abyss,

Invisible; the ear alone

Pursues the uproar till it dies;

Echo to Echo, groan for groan,

From deep to deep, replies.

"Silence again the darkness seals,

Darkness that may be felt;—but soon

The silver-clouded east reveals

The midnight spectre of the moon;

In half-eclipse she lifts her horn,

Yet, o'er the host of heaven supreme,

Brings the faint semblance of a morn,

With her awakening beam.

"Ah! at her touch, these Alpine heights

Unreal mockeries appear;

With blacker shadows, ghastlier lights,

Emerging as she climbs the sphere;

A crowd of apparitions pale!

I hold my breath in chill suspense,

They seem so exquisitely frail,

Lest they should vanish hence.

"I breathe again, I freely breathe;

Thee, Leman's Lake, once more I trace,

Like Dian's crescent far beneath,

As beautiful as Dian's face:

Pride of the land that gave me birth!

All that thy waves reflect I love,

Where heaven itself, brought down to earth,

Looks fairer than above.

"Safe on thy banks again I stray;

The trance of poesy is o'er,

And I am here at dawn of day,

Gazing on mountains as before,

Where all the strange mutations wrought,

Were magic feats of my own mind;

For, in that fairy land of thought,

Whate'er I seek, I find."



CHAPTER II. FOOT-TRAVELLING.



Tell me, my soul, why art thou restless? Why dost thou look forward to the future with such strong desire? The present is thine,—and the past;—and the future shall be! O that thou didst look forward to the great hereafter with half the longing wherewith thou longest for an earthly future,—which a few days at most will bring thee! to the meeting of the dead, as to the meeting of the absent! Thou glorious spirit-land! O, that I could behold thee as thou art,—the region of life, and light, and love, and the dwelling-place of those beloved ones, whose being has flowed onward like a silver-clear stream into the solemn-sounding main, into the ocean of Eternity.

Such were the thoughts that passed through thesoul of Flemming, as he lay in utter solitude and silence on the rounded summit of one of the mountains of the Furca Pass, and gazed, with tears in his eyes, and ardent longing in his heart, up into the blue-swimming heaven overhead, and at the glaciers and snowy mountain-peaks around him. Highest and whitest of all, stood the peak of the Jungfrau, which seemed near him, though it rose afar off from the bosom of the Lauterbrunner Thal. There it stood, holy and high and pure, the bride of heaven, all veiled and clothed in white, and lifted the thoughts of the beholder heavenward. O, he little thought then, as he gazed at it with longing and delight, how soon a form was to arise in his own soul, as holy, and high, and pure as this, and like this point heavenward.

Thus lay the traveller on the mountain summit, reposing his weary limbs on the short, brown grass, which more resembled moss than grass. He had sent his guide forward, that he might be alone. His soul within him was wild with a fierce and painful delight. The mountain air excited him; the mountain solitudes enticed, yet maddened him. Every peak, every sharp, jagged iceberg, seemed to pierce him. The silence was awful and sublime. It was like that in the soul of a dying man, when he hears no more the sounds of earth. He seemed to be laying aside his earthly garments. The heavens were near unto him; but between him and heaven every evil deed he had done arose gigantic, like those mountain-peaks, and breathed an icy breath upon him. O, let not the soul that suffers, dare to look Nature in the face, where she sits majestically aloft in the solitude of the mountains; for her face is hard and stern, and looks not in compassion upon her weak and erring child. It is the countenance of an accusing archangel, who summons us to judgment. In the valley she wears the countenance of a Virgin Mother, looking at us with tearful eyes, and a face of pity and love!

But yesterday Flemming had come up the valley of the Saint Gothard Pass, through Amsteg, where the Kerstelenbach comes dashing down the Maderaner Thal, from its snowy cradle overhead. The road is steep, and runs on zigzag terraces. The sides of the mountains are barren cliffs; and from their cloud-capped summits, unheard amid the roar of the great torrent below, come streams of snowwhite foam, leaping from rock to rock, like the mountain chamois. As you advance, the scene grows wilder and more desolate. There is not a tree in sight,—not a human habitation. Clouds, black as midnight, lower upon you from the ravines overhead; and the mountain torrent beneath is but a sheet of foam, and sends up an incessant roar. A sudden turn in the road brings you in sight of a lofty bridge, stepping from cliff to cliff with a single stride. A fearful cataract howls beneath it, like an evil spirit, and fills the air with mist; and the mountain wind claps its hands and shrieks through the narrow pass, Ha! ha!—This is the Devil's Bridge. It leads the traveller across the fearful chasm, and through a mountain gallery into the broad, green, silent meadow of Andermath.

Even the sunny morning, which followed thisgloomy day, had not chased the desolate impression from the soul of Flemming. His excitement increased as he lost himself more and more among the mountains; and now, as he lay all alone on the summit of the sunny hill, with only glaciers and snowy peaks about him, his soul, as I have said, was wild with a fierce and painful delight.

A human voice broke his reverie. He looked, and beheld at a short distance from him, the athletic form of a mountain herdsman, who was approaching the spot where he lay. He was a young man, clothed in a rustic garb, and holding a long staff in his hand. When Flemming rose, he stood still, and gazed at him, as if he loved the face of man, even in a stranger, and longed to hear a human voice, though it might speak in an unknown tongue. He answered Flemming's salutation in a rude mountain dialect, and in reply to his questions said;

"I, with two others, have charge of two hundred head of cattle on these mountains. Throughthe two summer months we remain here night and day; for which we receive each a Napoleon."

Flemming gave him half his summer wages. He was glad to do a good deed in secret, and yet so near heaven. The man received it as his due, like a toll-keeper; and soon after departed, leaving the traveller alone. And the traveller went his way down the mountain, as one distraught. He stopped only to pluck one bright blue flower, which bloomed all alone in the vast desert, and looked up at him, as if to say; "O take me with you! leave me not here companionless!"

Ere long he reached the magnificent glacier of the Rhone; a frozen cataract, more than two thousand feet in height, and many miles broad at its base. It fills the whole valley between two mountains, running back to their summits. At the base it is arched, like a dome; and above, jagged and rough, and resembles a mass of gigantic crystals, of a pale emerald tint, mingled with white. A snowy crust covers its surface; but at every rent and crevice the pale green ice shines clear in thesun. Its shape is that of a glove, lying with the palm downwards, and the fingers crooked and close together. It is a gauntlet of ice, which, centuries ago, Winter, the King of these mountains, threw down in defiance to the Sun; and year by year the Sun strives in vain to lift it from the ground on the point of his glittering spear. A feeling of wonder and delight came over the soul of Flemming when he beheld it, and he shouted and cried aloud;

"How wonderful! how glorious!"

After lingering a few hours in the cold, desolate valley, he climbed in the afternoon the steep Mayen-Wand, on the Grimsel, passed the Lake of the Dead, with its ink-black waters; and through the melting snow, and over slippery stepping-stones in the beds of numberless shallow brooks, descended to the Grimsel Hospital, where he passed the night, and thought it the most lone and desolate spot, that man ever slept in.

On the morrow, he rose with the day; and the rising sun found him already standing on the rusticbridge, which hangs over the verge of the Falls of the Aar at Handeck, where the river pitches down a precipice into a narrow and fearful abyss, shut in by perpendicular cliffs. At right angles with it comes the beautiful Aerlenbach; and halfway down the double cascade mingles into one. Thus he pursued his way down the Hasli Thal into the Bernese Oberland, restless, impatient, he knew not why, stopping seldom, and never long, and then rushing forward again, like the rushing river whose steps he followed, and in whose ice-cold waters ever and anon he bathed his wrists, to cool the fever in his blood; for the noonday sun was hot.

His heart dilated in the dilating valley, that grew broader and greener at every step. The sight of human faces and human dwellings soothed him; and through the fields of summer grain, in the broad meadows of Imgrund, he walked with a heart that ached no more, but trembled only, as our eyelids when we have done weeping. As he climbed the opposite hill, which hems in this romanticvalley, and, like a heavy yoke, chafes the neck of the Aar, he believed the ancient tradition, which says, that once the valley was a lake. From the summit of the hill he looked southward upon a beautiful landscape of gardens, and fields of grain, and woodlands, and meadows, and the ancient castle of Resti, looking down upon Meyringen. And now all around him were the singing of birds, and grateful shadows of the leafy trees; and sheeted waterfalls dropping from the woodland cliffs, seen only, but unheard, the fluted columns breaking into mist, and fretted with frequent spires and ornaments of foam, and not unlike the towers of a Gothic church inverted. There, in one white sheet of foam, the Riechenbach pours down into its deep beaker, into which the sun never shines. Face to face it beholds the Alpbach falling from the opposite hill, "like a downward smoke." When Flemming saw the innumerable runnels, sliding down the mountain-side, and leaping, all life and gladness, he would fain have clasped them in his arms and been their playmate, and revelled withthem in their freedom and delight. Yet he was weary with the day's journey, and entered the village of Meyringen, embowered in cherry-trees, which were then laden with fruit, more like a way-worn traveller than an enthusiastic poet. As he went up the tavern steps he said in his heart, with the Italian Aretino; "He who has not been at a tavern, knows not what a paradise it is. O holy tavern! O miraculous tavern! holy, because no carking cares are there, nor weariness, nor pain; and miraculous, because of the spits, which of themselves turn round and round! Of a truth all courtesy and good manners come from taverns, so full of bows, and Signor, si! and Signor, no!"

But even in the tavern he could not rest long. The same evening at sunset he was floating on the lake of Brienz, in an open boat, close under the cascade of the Giessbach, hearing the peasants sing the Ranz des Vaches. He slept that night at the other extremity of the lake, in a large house, which, like Saint Peter's at Joppa, stood by the water's side. The next day he wasted inwriting letters, musing in this green nest, and paddling about the lake again; and in the evening went across the beautiful meadows to Interlachen, where many things happened to him, and detained him long.



CHAPTER III. INTERLACHEN.



Interlachen! How peacefully, by the margin of the swift-rushing Aar, thou liest, on the broad lap of those romantic meadows, all overshadowed by the wide arms of giant trees! Only the round towers of thine ancient cloister rise above their summits; the round towers themselves, but a child's playthings under the great church-towers of the mountains. Close beside thee are lakes, which the flowing band of the river ties together. Before thee opens the magnificent valley of Lauterbrunn, where the cloud-hooded Monk and pale Virgin stand like Saint Francis and his Bride of Snow; and all around thee are fields, and orchards, and hamlets green, from which the church-bells answer each other at evening! The eveningsun was setting when I first beheld thee! The sun of life will set ere I forget thee! Surely it was a scene like this, that inspired the soul of the Swiss poet, in his Song of the Bell!

"Bell! thou soundest merrily,

When the bridal party

To the church doth hie!

Bell! thou soundest solemnly,

When, on Sabbath morning,

Fields deserted lie!

"Bell! thou soundest merrily;

Tellest thou at evening,

Bed-time draweth nigh!

Bell! thou soundest mournfully;

Tellest thou the bitter

Parting hath gone by!

"Say! how canst thou mourn?

How canst thou rejoice?

Art but metal dull!

And yet all our sorrowings,

And all our rejoicings,

Thou dost feel them all!

"God hath wonders many,

Which we cannot fathom,

Placed within thy form!

When the heart is sinking,

Thou alone canst raise it,

Trembling in the storm!"

Paul Flemming alighted at one of the principal hotels. The landlord came out to meet him. He had great eyes and a green coat; and reminded Flemming of the innkeeper mentioned in the Golden Ass, who had been changed by magic into a frog, and croaked to his customers from the lees of a wine-cask. His house, he said, was full; and so was every house in Interlachen; but, if the gentleman would walk into the parlour, he would procure a chamber for him, in the neighbourhood.

On the sofa sat a gentleman, reading; a stout gentleman of perhaps forty-five, round, ruddy, and with a head, which, being a little bald on the top, looked not unlike a crow's nest, with one egg in it. A good-humored face turned from the book as Flemming entered; and a good-humored voice exclaimed;

"Ha! ha! Mr. Flemming! Is it you, or your apparition! I told you we should meet again! though you were for taking an eternal farewell of your fellow-traveller."

Saying these words, the stout gentleman rose and shook Flemming heartily by the hand. And Flemming returned the shake as heartily, recognising in this ruddy personage, a former travelling companion, Mr. Berkley, whom he had left, a week or two previous, toiling up the Righi. Mr. Berkley was an Englishman of fortune; a good-humored, humane old bachelor; remarkable alike for his common sense and his eccentricity. That is to say, the basis of his character was good, sound common sense, trodden down and smoothed by education; but this level groundwork his strange and whimsical fancy used as a dancing-floor, whereon to exhibit her eccentric tricks. His ruling passion was cold-bathing; and he usually ate his breakfast sitting in a tub of cold water, and reading a newspaper. He kissed every child he met; and to every old man, said in passing, "God bless you!" with such an expression of voice and countenance, that no one could doubt his sincerity. He reminded one of Roger Bontemps, or the Little Man in Gray; though with a difference.

"The last time I had the pleasure of seeing you, Mr. Berkley," said Flemming, "was at Goldau, just as you were going up the Righi. I hope you were gratified with a fine sunrise on the mountain top."

"No, Sir, I was not!" replied Mr. Berkley. "It is all a humbug! a confounded humbug! They made such a noise about their sunrise, that I determined I would not see it. So I lay snug in bed; and only peeped through the window curtain. That was enough. Just above the house, on the top of the hill, stood some fifty half-dressed, romantic individuals, shivering in the wet grass; and, a short distance from them, a miserable wretch, blowing a long, wooden horn. That's your sunrise on the Righi, is it? said I; and went to sleep again. The best thing I saw at the Culm, was the advertisement on the bed-room doors, saying, that, if the ladies would wear the quilts and blankets for shawls, when they went out to see the sunrise, they must pay for the washing. Take my word for it, the Righi is a great humbug!"

"Where have you been since?"

"At Zurich and Schaffhausen. If you go to Zurich, beware how you stop at the Raven. They will cheat you. They cheated me; but I had my revenge, for, when we reached Schaffhausen, I wrote in the Traveller's Book;

Beware of the Raven of Zurich!

'T is a bird of omen ill;

With a noisy and an unclean nest,

And a very, very long bill.

If you go to the Golden Falken you will find it there. I am the author of those lines!"

"Bitter as Juvenal!" exclaimed Flemming.

"Not in the least bitter," said Mr. Berkley. "It is all true. Go to the Raven and see. But this Interlachen! this Interlachen! It is the loveliest spot on the face of the earth," he continued, stretching out both arms, as if to embrace the objectof his affection. "There,—only look out there!"

Here he pointed to the window. Flemming looked, and beheld a scene of transcendent beauty. The plain was covered already by the brown shade of the summer twilight. From the cottage roofs in Unterseen rose here and there a thin column of smoke over the tops of the trees and mingled with the evening shadows. The Valley of Lauterbrunnen was filled with a blue haze. Far above, in the clear, cloudless heaven, the white forehead of the Jungfrau blushed at the last kiss of the departing sun. It was a glorious Transfiguration of Nature! And when the village bells began to ring, and a single voice at a great distance was heard yodling forth a ballad, it rather broke than increased the enchantment of a scene, where silence was more musical than sound.

For a long time they gazed at the gloaming landscape, and spake not. At length people came into the parlour, and laid aside their shawls and hats, and exchanged a word or two with Berkley to Flemming they were all unknown. To him it was all Mr. Brown and Mrs. Johnson, and nothing more. The conversation turned upon the various excursions of the day. Some had been at the Staubbach, others at the Grindelwald; others at the Lake of Thun; and nobody before had ever experienced half the rapture, which they had experienced that day. And thus they sat in the twilight, as people love to do, at the close of a summer day. As yet the lamps had not been lighted; and one could not distinguish faces; but voices only, and forms, like shadows.

Presently a female figure, clothed in black, entered the room and sat down by the window. She rather listened to the conversation, than joined in it; but the few words she said were spoken in a voice so musical and full of soul, that it moved the soul of Flemming, like a whisper from heaven.

O, how wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul! The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye; and the heart of man is written uponhis countenance. But the soul reveals itself in the voice only; as God revealed himself to the prophet of old in the still, small voice; and in a voice from the burning bush. The soul of man is audible, not visible. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the eternal fountain, invisible to man!

Flemming would fain have sat and listened for hours to the sound of that unknown voice. He felt sure, in his secret heart, that the being from whom it came was beautiful. His imagination filled up the faint outline, which the eye beheld in the fading twilight, and the figure stood already in his mind, like Raphael's beautiful Madonna in the Dresden gallery. He was never more mistaken in his life. The voice belonged to a beautiful being, it is true; but her beauty was different from that of any Madonna which Raphael ever painted; as he would have seen, had he waited till the lamps were lighted. But in the midst of his reverie and saint-painting, the landlord came in, andtold him he had found a chamber, which he begged him to go and look at.

Flemming took his leave and departed. Berkley went with him, to see, he said, what kind of a nest his young friend was to sleep in.

"The chamber is not what I could wish," said the landlord, as he led them across the street. "It is in the old cloister. But to-morrow or next day, you can no doubt have a room at the house."

The name of the cloister struck Flemming's imagination pleasantly. He was owl enough to like ruins and old chambers, where nuns or friars had slept. And he said to Berkley;

"So, you perceive, my nest is to be in a cloister. It already makes me think of a bird's-nest I once saw on an old tower of Heidelberg castle, built in the jaws of a lion, which formerly served as a spout. But pray tell me, who was that young lady, with the soft voice?"

"What young lady with the soft voice?"

"The young lady in black, who sat by the window."

"O, she is the daughter of an English officer, who died not long ago at Naples. She is passing the summer here with her mother, for her health."

"What is her name?"

"Ashburton."

"Is she beautiful?"

"Not in the least; but very intellectual. A woman of genius, I should say."

And now they had reached the walls of the cloister, and passed under an arched gateway, and close beneath the round towers, which Flemming had already seen, rising with their cone-shaped roofs above the trees, like tall tapers, with extinguishers upon them.

"It is not so bad, as it looks," said the landlord, knocking at a small door, in the main building. "The Bailiff lives in one part of it."

A servant girl, with a candle in her hand, opened the door, and conducted Flemming and Berkley to the chamber which had been engaged. It was a large room on the lower floor, wainscoted with pine, and unpainted. Three lofty and narrowwindows, with leaden lattices and small panes, looked southward towards the valley of Lauterbrunnen and the mountains. In one corner was a large square bed, with a tester and checked curtains. In another, a huge stove of painted tiles, reaching almost to the ceiling. An old sofa, a few high-backed antique chairs, and a table, completed the furniture of the room.

Thus Flemming took possession of his monkish cell and dormitory. He ordered tea, and began to feel at home. Berkley passed the evening with him. On going away he said;

"Good night! I leave you to the care of the Virgin and all the Saints. If the ghost of any old monk comes back after his prayer-book, my compliments to him. If I were a younger man, you certainly should see a ghost. Good night!"

When he had departed, Flemming opened the lattice of one of the windows. The moon had risen, and silvered the dark outline of the nearest hills; while, afar off, the snowy summits of the Jungfrau and the Silver-Horn shone like a white cloud in the sky. Close beneath the windows was a flower-garden; and the breath of the summer night came to him with dewy fragrance. There was a grateful seclusion about the place. He blessed the happy accident, which gave him such a lodging, and fell asleep that night thinking of the nuns, who once had slept in the same quiet cells; but neither wimpled nun nor cowled monk appeared to him in his dreams; not even the face of Mary Ashburton; nor did he hear her voice.



CHAPTER IV. THE EVENING AND THE MORNING STAR.



Old Froissart tells us, in his Chronicles, that when King Edward beheld the Countess of Salisbury at her castle gate, he thought he had never seen before so noble nor so fair a lady; he was stricken therewith to the heart with a sparkle of fine love, that endured long after; he thought no lady in the world so worthy to be beloved, as she. And so likewise thought Paul Flemming, when he beheld the English lady in the fair light of a summer morning. I will not disguise the truth. She is my heroine; and I mean to describe her with great truth and beauty, so that all shall be in love with her, and I most of all.

Mary Ashburton was in her twentieth summer. Like the fair maiden Amoret, she was sitting inthe lap of womanhood. They did her wrong, who said she was not beautiful; and yet

"she was not fair,

Nor beautiful;—those words express her not.

But O, her looks had something excellent,

That wants a name!"

Her face had a wonderful fascination in it. It was such a calm, quiet face, with the light of the rising soul shining so peacefully through it. At times it wore an expression of seriousness,—of sorrow even; and then seemed to make the very air bright with what the Italian poets so beautifully call the lampeggiar dell' angelico riso,—the lightning of the angelic smile.

And O, those eyes,—those deep, unutterable eyes, with "down-falling eyelids, full of dreams and slumber," and within them a cold, living light, as in mountain lakes at evening, or in the river of Paradise, forever gliding,

"with a brown, brown current

Under the shade perpetual, that never

Ray of the sun lets in, nor of the moon."

I dislike an eye that twinkles like a star. Those only are beautiful which, like the planets, have a steady, lambent light;—are luminous, but not sparkling. Such eyes the Greek poets give to the Immortals. But I forget myself.

The lady's figure was striking. Every step, every attitude was graceful, and yet lofty, as if inspired by the soul within. Angels in the old poetic philosophy have such forms; it was the soul itself imprinted on the air. And what a soul was hers! A temple dedicated to Heaven, and, like the Pantheon at Rome, lighted only from above. And earthly passions in the form of gods were no longer there, but the sweet and thoughtful faces of Christ, and the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. Thus there was not one discordant thing in her; but a perfect harmony of figure, and face, and soul, in a word of the whole being. And he who had a soul to comprehend hers, must of necessity love her, and, having once loved her, could love no other woman forevermore.

No wonder, then, that Flemming felt his heartdrawn towards her, as, in her morning walk, she passed him, sitting alone under the great walnut trees near the cloister, and thinking of Heaven, but not of her. She, too, was alone. Her cheek was no longer pale; but glowing and bright, with the inspiration of the summer air. Flemming gazed after her till she disappeared, even as a vision of his dreams, he knew not whither. He was not yet in love, but very near it; for he thanked God, that he had made such beautiful beings to walk the earth.

Last night he had heard a voice to which his soul responded; and he might have gone on his way, and taken no farther heed. But he would have heard that voice afterwards, whenever at evening he thought of this evening at Interlachen. To-day he had seen more clearly the vision, and his restless soul calm. The place seemed pleasant to him; and he could not go. He did not ask himself whence came this calm. He felt it; and was happy in the feeling; and blessed thelandscape and the summer morning, as if they possessed the wonder-working power.

"A pleasant morning dream to you;" said a friendly voice; and at the same moment some one laid his hand upon Flemming's shoulder. It was Berkley. He had approached unseen and unheard.

"I see by the smile on your countenance," he continued, "that it is no day-incubus."

"You are right," replied Flemming. "It was a pleasant dream, which you have put to flight."

"And I am glad to see, that you have also put to flight the gloomy thoughts which used to haunt you. I like to see people cheerful and happy. What is the use of giving way to sadness in this beautiful world?"

"Ah! this beautiful world!" said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddestof us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."

"And who says we don't?" interrupted Berkley. "Come, come! Let us go to breakfast. The morning air has given me a rude appetite. I long to say grace over a fresh egg; and eat salt with my worst enemies; namely, the Cockneys at the hotel. After breakfast you must give yourself up wholly to me. I shall take you to the Grindelwald!"

"To-day, then, you do not breakfast like Diogenes, but consent to leave your tub."

"Yes, for the pleasure of your company. I shall also blow out the light in my lantern, having found you."

"Thank you."

The breakfast passed without any unusual occurrence. Flemming watched the entrance of every guest; but she came not,—the guest he most desired to see.

"And now for the Grindelwald!" said Berkley.

"Why such haste? We have the whole day before us. There is time enough."

"Not a moment to loso, I assure you. The carriage is at the door."

They drove up the valley of Lauterbrunnen, and turned eastward among the mountains of the Grindelwald. There they passed the day; half-frozen by the icy breath of the Great Glacier, upon whose surface stand pyramids and blocks of ice, like the tombstones of a cemetery. It was a weary day to Flemming. He wished himself at Interlachen; and was glad when, towards evening, he saw once more the cone-roofed towers of the cloister rising above the walnut trees.

That evening is written in red letters in his history. It gave him another revelation of thebeauty and excellence of the female character and intellect; not wholly new to him, yet now renewed and fortified. It was from the lips of Mary Ashburton, that the revelation came. Her form arose, like a tremulous evening star, in the firmament of his soul. He conversed with her; and with her alone; and knew not when to go. All others were to him as if they were not there. He saw their forms, but saw them as the forms of inanimate things. At length her mother came; and Flemming beheld in her but another Mary Ashburton, with beauty more mature;—the same forehead and eyes, the same majestic figure; and, as yet, no trace of age. He gazed upon her with a feeling of delight, not unmingled with holy awe. She was to him the rich and glowing Evening, from whose bosom the tremulous star was born.

Berkley took no active part in the conversation, but did what was much more to the purpose, that it is to say, arranged a drive for the next day with the Ashburtons, and of course invited Flemming, who went home that night with a halo round hishead; and wondering much at a dandy, who stood at the door of the hotel, and said to his companion, as Flemming passed;

"What do you call this place? I have been here two hours already, and find it devilish dull!"



CHAPTER V. A RAINY DAY.



When Flemming awoke the next morning he saw the sky dark and lowering. From the mountain tops hung a curtain of mist, whose heavy folds waved to and fro in the valley below. Over all the landscape, the soft, summer rain was falling. No admiring eyes would look up that day at the Staubbach.

A rainy day in Switzerland puts a sudden stop to many diversions. The coachman may drive to the tavern and then back to the stable; but no farther. The sunburnt guide may sit at the ale-house door, and welcome; and the boatman whistle and curse the clouds, at his own sweet will; but no foot stirs abroad for all that; no traveller moves, if he has time to stay. The rainy daygives him time for reflection. He has leisure now to take cognizance of his impressions, and make up his account with the mountains. He remembers, too, that he has friends at home; and writes up the Journal, neglected for a week or more; and letters neglected longer; or finishes the rough pencil-sketch, begun yesterday in the open air. On the whole he is not sorry it rains; though disappointed.

Flemming was both sorry and disappointed; but he did not on that account fail to go over to the Ashburtons at the appointed hour. He found them sitting in the parlour. The mother was reading, and the daughter retouching a sketch of the Lake of Thun. After the usual salutations, Flemming seated himself near the daughter, and said;

"We shall have no Staubbach to-day, I presume; only this Giessbach from the clouds."

"Nothing more, I suppose. So we must be content to stay in-doors; and listen to the soundof the eves-dropping rain. It gives me time to finish some of these rough sketches."

"It is a pleasant pastime," said Flemming; "and I perceive you are very skilful. I am delighted to see, that you can draw a straight line. I never before saw a lady's sketch-book, in which all the towers did not resemble the leaning Tower of Pisa. I always tremble for the little men under them."

"How absurd!" exclaimed Mary Ashburton, with a smile that passed through the misty air of Flemming's thoughts, like a sunbeam; "For one, I succeed much better in straight lines than in any others. Here I have been trying a half-hour to make this water-wheel round; and round it never will be."

"Then let it remain as it is. It looks uncommonly picturesque, and may pass for a new invention."

The lady continued to sketch, and Flemming to gaze at her beautiful face; often repeating to himself those lines in Marlow's Faust;

"O thou art fairer than the evening air,

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!"

He certainly would have betrayed himself to the maternal eye of Mrs. Ashburton, had she not been wholly absorbed in the follies of a fashionable novel. Ere long the fair sketcher had paused for a moment; and Flemming had taken her sketch-book in his hands and was looking it through from the beginning with ever-increasing delight, half of which he dared not express, though he favored her with some comments and bursts of admiration.

"This is truly a very beautiful sketch of Murten and the battle-field! How quietly the land-scape sleeps there by the lake, after the battle! Did you ever read the ballad of Veit Weber, the shoe-maker, on this subject? He says, the routed Burgundians jumped into the lake, and the Swiss Leaguers shot them down like wild ducks among the reeds. He fought in the battle and wrote the ballad afterwards;—

'He had himself laid hand on sword,

He who this rhyme did write;

Till evening mowed he with the sword,

And sang the song at night.'"

"You must give me the whole ballad," said Miss Ashburton; "it will serve to illustrate the sketch."

"And the sketch to illustrate the ballad. And now we suddenly slide down the Alps into Italy, and are even in Rome, if I mistake not. This is surely a head of Homer?"

"Yes," replied the lady, with a little enthusiasm. "Do you not remember the marble bust at Rome? When I first beheld that bust, it absolutely inspired me with awe. It is not the face of a man, but of a god!"

"And you have done it no injustice in your copy," said Flemming, catching a new enthusiasm from hers. "With what a classic grace the fillet, passing round the majestic forehead, confines his flowing locks, which mingle with his beard! The countenance, too, is calm, majestic, godlike! Even the fixed and sightless eyeballs do not mar the imageof the seer! Such were the sightless eyes of the blind old man of Chios. They seem to look with mournful solemnity into the mysterious future; and the marble lips to repeat that prophetic passage in the Hymn to Apollo; 'Let me also hope to be remembered in ages to come. And when any one, born of the tribes of men, comes hither, a weary traveller, and inquires, who is the sweetest of the Singing Men, that resort to your feasts, and whom you most delight to hear, do you make answer for me. It is the Blind Man, who dwells in Chios; his songs excel all that can ever be sung!' But do you really believe, that this is a portrait of Homer?"

"Certainly not! It is only an artist's dream. It was thus, that Homer appeared to him in his visions of the antique world. Every one, you know, forms an image in his fancy of persons and things he has never seen; and the artist reproduces them in marble or on canvass."

"And what is the image in your fancy? Is it like this?"

"No; not entirely. I have drawn my impressions from another source. Whenever I think of Homer, which is not often, he walks before me, solemn and serene, as in the vision of the great Italian; in countenance neither sorrowful nor glad, followed by other bards, and holding in his right hand a sword!"

"That is a finer conception, than even this," said Flemming. "And I perceive from your words, as well as from this book, that you have a true feeling for art, and understand what it is. You have had bright glimpses into the enchanted land."

"I trust," replied the lady modestly, "that I am not wholly without this feeling. Certainly I have as strong and passionate a love of Art as of Nature."

"But does it not often offend you to hear people speaking of Art and Nature as opposite and discordant things? Surely nothing can be more false. Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man. Indeed, Art signifies no more than this. Art is Power. That is the original meaning of the word. It is the creative power by which the soul of man makes itself known, through some external manifestation or outward sign. As we can always hear the voice of God, walking in the garden, in the cool of the day, or under the star-light, where, to quote one of this poet's verses, 'high prospects and the brows of all steep hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for shows';—so, under the twilight and the starlight of past ages, do we hear the voice of man, walking amid the works of his hands, and city walls and towers and the spires of churches, thrust up themselves for shows."

The lady smiled at his warmth; and he continued;

"This, however, is but a similitude; and Art and Nature are more nearly allied than by similitudes only. Art is the revelation of man; and not merely that, but likewise the revelation of Nature, speaking through man. Art preexists in Nature, and Nature is reproduced in Art. As vaporsfrom the ocean, floating landward and dissolved in rain, are carried back in rivers to the ocean, so thoughts and the semblances of things that fall upon the soul of man in showers, flow out again in living streams of Art, and lose themselves in the great ocean, which is Nature. Art and Nature are not, then, discordant, but ever harmoniously working in each other."

Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm. Flemming spake with such evident interest in the subject, that Miss Ashburton did not fail to manifest some interest in what he said; and, encouraged by this, he proceeded;

"Thus in this wondrous world wherein we live, which is the World of Nature, man has made unto himself another world hardly less wondrous, which is the World of Art. And it lies infolded and compassed about by the other,

'And the clear region where 't was born,

Round in itself incloses.'

Taking this view of art, I think we understand more easily the skill of the artist, and the differencebetween him and the mere amateur. What we call miracles and wonders of art are not so to him who created them. For they were created by the natural movements of his own great soul. Statues, paintings, churches, poems, are but shadows of himself;—shadows in marble, colors, stone, words. He feels and recognises their beauty; but he thought these thoughts and produced these things as easily as inferior minds do thoughts and things inferior. Perhaps more easily. Vague images and shapes of beauty floating through the soul, the semblances of things as yet indefinite or ill-defined, and perfect only when put in art,—this Possible Intellect, as the Scholastic Philosophers have termed it,—the artist shares in common with us all. The lovers of art are many. But the Active Intellect, the creative power,—the power to put these shapes and images in art, to imbody the indefinite, and render perfect, is his alone. He shares the gift with few. He knows not even whence nor how this is. He knows only that it is; that God has given him the power, which has been denied to others."

"I should have known you were just from Germany," said the lady, with a smile, "even if you had not told me so. You are an enthusiast for the Germans. For my part I cannot endure their harsh language."

"You would like it better, if you knew it better," answered Flemming. "It is not harsh to me; but homelike, hearty, and full of feeling, like the sound of happy voices at a fireside, of a winter's night, when the wind blows, and the fire crackles, and hisses, and snaps. I do indeed love the Germans; the men are so hale and hearty, and the Frauleins so tender and true!"

"I always think of men with pipes and beer, and women with knittingwork."

"O, those are English prejudices," exclaimed Flemming. "Nothing can be more—"

"And their very literature presents itself to my imagination under the same forms."

"I see you have read only English criticisms; and have an idea, that all German books smell, as it were, 'of groceries, of brown papers, filled withgreasy cakes and slices of bacon; and of fryings in frowzy back-parlours; and this shuts you out from a glorious world of poetry, romance, and dreams!"

Mary Ashburton smiled, and Flemming continued to turn over the leaves of the sketch-book, with an occasional criticism and witticism. At length he came to a leaf which was written in pencil. People of a lively imagination are generally curious, and always so when a little in love.

"Here is a pencil-sketch," said he, with an entreating look, "which I would fain examine with the rest."

"You may do so, if you wish; but you will find it the poorest sketch in the book. I was trying one day to draw the picture of an artist's life in Rome, as it presented itself to my imagination; and this is the result. Perhaps it may awaken some pleasant recollection in your mind."

Flemming waited no longer; but read with the eyes of a lover, not of a critic, the following description, which inspired him with a new enthusiasm for Art, and for Mary Ashburton.

"I often reflect with delight upon the young artist's life in Rome. A stranger from the cold and gloomy North, he has crossed the Alps, and with the devotion of a pilgrim journeyed to the Eternal City. He dwells perhaps upon the Pincian Hill; and hardly a house there, which is not inhabited by artists from foreign lands. The very room he lives in has been their abode from time out of mind. Their names are written all over the walls; perhaps some further record of them left in a rough sketch upon the window-shutter, with an inscription and a date. These things consecrate the place, in his imagination. Even these names, though unknown to him, are not without associations in his mind.

"In that warm latitude he rises with the day. The night-vapors are already rolling away over the Campagna sea-ward. As he looks from his window, above and beyond their white folds he recognises the tremulous blue sea at Ostia. Over Soracte rises the sun,—over his own beloved mountain; though no longer worshipped there, asof old. Before him, the antique house, where Raphael lived, casts its long, brown shadow down into the heart of modern Rome. The city lies still asleep and silent. But above its dark roofs, more than two hundred steeples catch the sunshine on their gilded weather-cocks. Presently the bells begin to ring, and, as the artist listens to their pleasant chimes, he knows that in each of those churches over the high altar, hangs a painting by some great master's hand, whose beauty comes between him and heaven, so that he cannot pray, but wonder only.

"Among these works of art he passes the day; but oftenest in St. Peter's and the Vatican. Up the vast marble stair-case,—through the Corridor Chiaramonti,—through vestibules, galleries, chambers,—he passes, as in a dream. All are filled with busts and statues; or painted in daring frescoes. What forms of strength and beauty! what glorious creations of the human mind! and in that last chamber of all, standing alone upon his pedestal, the Apollo found at Actium,—in such a majestic attitude,—with such a noble countenance, life-like, god-like!

"Or perhaps he passes into the chambers of the painters; but goes no further than the second. For in the middle of that chamber a large painting stands upon the heavy easel, as if unfinished, though more than three hundred years ago the great artist completed it, and then laid his pencil away forever, leaving this last benediction to the world. It is the Transfiguration of Christ by Raphael. A child looks not at the stars with greater wonder, than the artist at this painting. He knows how many studious years are in that picture. He knows the difficult path that leads to perfection, having himself taken some of the first steps.—Thus he recalls the hour, when that broad canvass was first stretched upon its frame, and Raphael stood before it, and laid the first colors upon it, and beheld the figures one by one born into life, and 'looked upon the work of his own hands with a smile, that it should have succeeded so well.' He recalls too, the hour, when, the task accomplished, the pencil dropped from the master's dying hand, and his eyes closed to open on a more glorious transfiguration, and at length the dead Raphael lay in his own studio, before this wonderful painting, more glorious than any conqueror under the banners and armorial hatchments of his funeral!

"Think you, that such sights and thoughts as these do not move the heart of a young man and an artist! And when he goes forth into the open air, the sun is going down, and the gray ruins of an antique world receive him. From the Palace of the Cesars he looks down into the Forum, or towards the Coliseum; or westward sees the last sunshine strike the bronze Archangel, which stands upon the Tomb of Adrian. He walks amid a world of Art in ruins. The very street-lamps, that light him homeward, burn before some painted or sculptured image of the Madonna! What wonder is it, if dreams visit him in his sleep,—nay, if his whole life seem to him a dream! What wonder, if, with a feverish heart and quick hand, he strive to reproduce those dreams in marble or on canvass."

Foolish Paul Flemming! who both admired and praised this little sketch, and yet was too blind to see, that it was written from the heart, and not from the imagination! Foolish Paul Flemming! who thought, that a girl of twenty could write thus, without a reason! Close upon this followed another pencil sketch, which he likewise read, with the lady's permission. It was this.

"The whole period of the Middle Ages seems very strange to me. At times I cannot persuade myself that such things could have been, as history tells us; that such a strange world was a part of our world,—that such a strange life was a part of the life, which seems to us who are living it now, so passionless and commonplace. It is only when I stand amid ruined castles, that look at me so mournfully, and behold the heavy armour of old knights, hanging upon the wainscot of Gothic chambers; or when I walk amid the aisles of some dusky minster, whose walls are narrative ofhoar antiquity, and whose very bells have been baptized, and see the carved oaken stalls in the choir, where so many generations of monks have sat and sung, and the tombs, where now they sleep in silence, to awake no more to their midnight psalms;—it is only at such times, that the history of the Middle Ages is a reality to me, and not a passage in romance.

"Likewise the illuminated manuscripts of those ages have something of this power of making the dead Past a living Present in my mind. What curious figures are emblazoned on the creaking parchment, making its yellow leaves laugh with gay colors! You seem to come upon them unawares. Their faces have an expression of wonder. They seem all to be just startled from their sleep by the sound you made when you unloosed the brazen clasps, and opened the curiously-carved oaken covers, that turn on hinges, like the great gates of a city. To the building of that city some diligent monk gave the whole of a long life. With what strange denizens he peopled it! Adam and Eve standing under a tree, she, with the apple in her hand;—the patriarch Abraham, with a tree growing out of his body, and his descendants sitting owl-like upon its branches;—ladies with flowing locks of gold; knights in armour, with most fantastic, long-toed shoes; jousts and tournaments; and Minnesingers, and lovers, whose heads reach to the towers, where their ladies sit;—and all so angular, so simple, so childlike,—all in such simple attitudes, with such great eyes, and holding up such long, lank fingers!—These things are characteristic of the Middle Ages, and persuade me of the truth of history."

At this moment Berkley entered, with a Swiss cottage, which he had just bought as a present for somebody's child in England; and a cane with a chamois-horn on the end of it, which he had just bought for himself. This was the first time, that Flemming had been sorry to see the good-natured man. His presence interrupted the delightful conversation he was carrying on "under four eyes," with Mary Ashburton. He reallythought Berkley a bore, and wondered it had never occurred to him before. Mrs. Ashburton, too, must needs lay down her book; and the conversation became general. Strange to say, the Swiss dinner-hour of one o'clock, did not come a moment too soon for Flemming. It did not even occur to him that it was early; for he was seated beside Mary Ashburton, and at dinner one can say so much, without being overheard.



CHAPTER VI. AFTER DINNER, AND AFTER THE MANNER OF THE BEST CRITICS.



When the learned Thomas Diafoirus wooed the fair Angelique, he drew from his pocket a medical thesis, and presented it to her, as the first-fruits of his genius; and at the same time, invited her, with her father's permission, to attend the dissection of a woman, upon whom he was to lecture. Paul Flemming did nearly the same thing; and so often, that it had become a habit. He was continually drawing, from his pocket or his memory, some scrap of song or story; and inviting some fair Angelique, either with her father's permission or without, to attend the dissection of anauthor, upon whom he was to discourse. He soon gave proofs of this to Mary Ashburton.

"What books have we here for afternoon reading?" said Flemming, taking a volume from the parlour table, when they had returned from the dining-room. "O, it is Uhland's Poems. Have you read any thing of his? He and Tieck are the best living poets of Germany. They dispute the palm of superiority. Let me give you a lesson in German, this afternoon, Miss Ashburton; so that no one may accuse you of 'omitting the sweet benefit of time, to clothe your age with angel-like perfection.' I have opened at random upon the ballad of the Black Knight. You repeat the German after me, and I will translate to you. Pfingsten war, das Fest der Freude!"

"I should never persuade my unwilling lips to pronounce such sounds. So I beg you not to perplex me with your German, but read me the ballad in English."

"Well, then, listen. I will improvise a translation for your own particular benefit.

"'T was Pentecost, the Feast of Gladness,

When woods and fields put off all sadness.

Thus began the King and spake;

'So from the halls

Of ancient Hofburg's walls,

A luxuriant Spring shall break.'

"Drums and trumpets echo loudly,

Wave the crimson banners proudly.

From balcony the King looked on;

In the play of spears,

Fell all the cavaliers,

Before the monarch's stalwart son.

"To the barrier of the fight,

Rode at last a sable Knight.

'Sir Knight! your name and scutcheon, say!'

'Should I speak it here,

Ye would stand aghast with fear;

Am a Prince of mighty sway!'

"When he rode into the lists,

The arch of heaven grew black with mists,

And the castle 'gan to rock.

At the first blow,

Fell the youth from saddle-bow,

Hardly rises from the shock.

"Pipe and viol call the dances,

Torch-light through the high halls glances;

Waves a mighty shadow in.

With manner bland

Doth ask the maiden's hand,

Doth with her the dance begin.

"Danced in sable iron sark,

Danced a measure weird and dark,

Coldly clasped her limbs around.

From breast and hair

Down fall from her the fair

Flowerets wilted to the ground.

"To the sumptuous banquet came

Every Knight and every Dame.

'Twixt son and daughter all distraught,

With mournful mind

The ancient King reclined,

Gazed at them in silent thought.

"Pale the children both did look,

But the guest a beaker took;

'Golden wine will make you whole!"

The children drank,

Gave many a courteous thank;

'O that draught was very cool!'

"Each the father's breast embraces,

Son and daughter; and their faces

Colorless grow utterly.

Whichever way

Looks the fear-struck father gray,

He beholds his children die.

" 'Woe! the blessed children both,

Takest thou in the joy of youth;

Take me, too, the joyless father!'

Spake the Grim Guest,

From his hollow, cavernous breast;

'Roses in the spring I gather!'"

"That is indeed a striking ballad!" said Miss Ashburton, "but rather too grim and ghostly for this dull afternoon."

"It begins joyously enough with the feast of Pentecost, and the crimson banners at the old castle. Then the contrast is well managed. The Knight in black mail, and the waving in of the mighty shadow in the dance, and the dropping of the faded flowers, are all strikingly presented to the imagination. However, it tellsits own story, and needs no explanation. Here is something in a different vein, though still melancholy. The Castle by the Sea. Shall I read it?"

"Yes, if you like."

Flemming read;

"Hast thou seen that lordly castle,

That Castle by the Sea?

Golden and red above it

The clouds float gorgeously.

"And fain it would stoop downward

To the mirrored wave below;

And fain it would soar upward

In the evening's crimson glow.

" 'Well have I seen that castle,

That Castle by the Sea,

And the moon above it standing,

And the mist rise solemnly.'

"The winds and the waves of ocean,

Had they a merry chime?

Didst thou hear, from those lofty chambers,

The harp and the minstrel's rhyme?

" 'The winds and the waves of ocean,

They rested quietly,

But I heard on the gale a sound of wail,

And tears came to my eye.'

"And sawest thou on the turrets

The King and his royal bride?

And the wave of their crimson mantles?

And the golden crown of pride?

"Led they not forth in rapture

A beauteous maiden there?

Resplendent as the morning sun,

Beaming with golden hair?

" 'Well saw I the ancient parents,

Without the crown of pride;

They were moving slow, in weeds of woe,

No maiden was by their side!'

How do you like that?"

"It is very graceful, and pretty. But Uhland seems to leave a great deal to his reader's imagination. All his readers should be poets themselves, or they will hardly comprehend him. I confess, Ihardly understand the passage where he speaks of the castle's stooping downward to the mirrored wave below, and then soaring upward into the gleaming sky. I suppose, however, he wishes to express the momentary illusion we experience at beholding a perfect reflection of an old tower in the sea, and look at it as if it were not a mere shadow in the water; and yet the real tower rises far above, and seems to float in the crimson evening clouds. Is that the meaning?"

"I should think it was. To me it is all a beautiful cloud landscape, which I comprehend and feel, and yet should find some difficulty perhaps in explaining."

"And why need one always explain? Some feelings are quite untranslatable. No language has yet been found for them. They gleam upon us beautifully through the dim twilight of fancy, and yet, when we bring them close to us, and hold them up to the light of reason, lose their beauty, all at once; just as glow-worms, which gleam with such a spiritual light in the shadows of evening, when brought in where the candlesare lighted, are found to be only worms, like so many others."

"Very true. We ought sometimes to be content with feeling. Here, now, is an exquisite piece, which soothes one like the fall of evening shadows,—like the dewy coolness of twilight after a sultry day. I shall not give you a bald translation of my own, because I have laid up in my memory another, which, though not very literal, equals the original in beauty. Observe how finely it commences.

"Many a year is in its grave,

Since I crossed this restless wave;

And the evening, fair as ever,

Shines on ruin, rock, and river.

"Then, in this same boat, beside,

Sat two comrades old and tried;

One with all a father's truth,

One with all the fire of youth.

"One on earth in silence wrought,

And his grave in silence sought;

But the younger, brighter form

Passed in battle and in storm!

"So, whene'er I turn my eye

Back upon the days gone by,

Saddening thoughts of friends come o'er me,—

Friends, who closed their course before me.

"Yet what binds us, friend to friend,

But that soul with soul can blend?

Soul-like were those hours of yore;

Let us walk in soul once more!

"Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee;

Take,—I give it willingly;

For, invisibly to thee,

Spirits twain have crossed with me!"

"O, that is beautiful,—'beautiful exceedingly!' Who translated it?"

"I do not know. I wish I could find him out. It is certainly admirably done; though in the measure of the original there is something like the rocking motion of a boat, which is not preserved in the translation."

"And is Uhland always so soothing and spiritual?"

"Yes, he generally looks into the spirit-world. I am now trying to find here a little poem on the Death of a Country Clergyman; in which he introduces a beautiful picture. But I cannot turn to it. No matter. He describes the spirit of the good old man, returning to earth on a bright summer morning, and standing amid the golden corn and the red and blue flowers, and mildly greeting the reapers as of old. The idea is beautiful, is it not?"

"Yes, very beautiful!"

"But there is nothing morbid in Uhland's mind. He is always fresh and invigorating, like a breezy morning. In this he differs entirely from such writers as Salis and Matthisson."

"And who are they?"

"Two melancholy gentlemen to whom life was only a Dismal Swamp, upon whose margin they walked with cambric handkerchiefs in their hands, sobbing and sighing, and making signals to Death, to come and ferry them over the lake. And now their spirits stand in the green fields of German song, like two weeping-willows, bending over agrave. To read their poems, is like wandering through a village churchyard on a summer evening, reading the inscription upon the grave-stones, and recalling sweet images of the departed; while above you,

'Hark! in the holy grove of palms,

Where the stream of life runs free,

Echoes, in the angels' psalms,

'Sister spirit! hail to thee!'"

"How musically those lines flow! Are they Matthisson's!"

"Yes; and they do indeed flow musically. I wish I had his poems here. I should like to read to you his Elegy on the Ruins of an Ancient Castle. It is an imitation of Gray's Elegy. You have been at Baden-Baden?

"Yes; last summer."

"And have not forgotten—"

"The old castle? Of course not. What a magnificent ruin it is!"

"That is the scene of Matthisson's Poem, andseems to have filled the melancholy bard with more than wonted inspiration."

"I should like very much to see the poem, I remember that old ruin with so much delight."

"I am sorry I have not a translation of it for you. Instead of it I will give you a sweet and mournful poem from Salis. It is called the Song of the Silent Land.

"Into the Silent Land!

Ah! who shall lead us thither!

Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather,

And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand.

Who leads us with a gentle hand,

Thither, oh, thither.

Into the Silent Land?

"Into the Silent Land!

To you, ye boundless regions

Of all perfection! Tender morning-visions

Of beauteous souls! Eternity's own band!

Who in Life's battle firm doth stand,

Shall bear Hope's tender blossoms

Into the Silent Land!

"O Land! O Land!

For all the broken-hearted

The mildest herald by our fate allotted,

Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand

To lead us with a gentle hand

Into the land of the great departed,

Into the Silent Land!

Is not that a beautiful poem?"

Mary Ashburton made no answer. She had turned away to hide her tears. Flemming wondered, that Berkley could say she was not beautiful. Still he was rather pleased than offended at it. He felt at that moment how sweet a thing it would be to possess one, who should seem beautiful to him alone, and yet to him be more beautiful than all the world beside! How bright the world became to him at that thought! It was like one of those paintings in which all the light streams from the face of the Virgin. O, there is nothing holier in this life of ours, than the first consciousness of love,—the first fluttering of its silken wings; the first rising sound and breath of thatwind, which is so soon to sweep through the soul, to purify or to destroy!

Old histories tell us, that the great Emperor Charlemagne stamped his edicts with the hilt of his sword. The greater Emperor, Death, stamps his with the blade; and they are signed and executed with the same stroke. Flemming received that night a letter from Heidelberg, which told him, that Emma of Ilmenau was dead. The fate of this poor girl affected him deeply; and he said in his heart;

"Father in Heaven! Why was the lot of this weak and erring child so hard! What had she done, to be so tempted in her weakness, and perish? Why didst thou suffer her gentle affections to lead her thus astray?"

And, through the silence of the awful midnight, the voice of an avalanche answered from the distant mountains, and seemed to say;

"Peace! peace! Why dost thou question God's providence!"



CHAPTER VII. TAKE CARE!



Fair is the valley of Lauterbrunnen with its green meadows and overhanging cliffs. The ruined castle of Unspunnen stands like an armed warder at the gate of the enchanted land. In calm serenity the snowy mountains rise beyond. Fairer than the Rock of Balmarusa, you frowning precipice looks down upon us; and, from the topmost cliff, the white pennon of the Brook of Dust shimmers and waves in the sunny air!

It was a bright, beautiful morning after nightrain. Every dewdrop and raindrop had a whole heaven within it; and so had the heart of Paul Flemming, as, with Mrs. Ashburton and her dark-eyed daughter, he drove up the Valley of Lauter-brunnen,—the Valley of Fountains-Only.

"How beautiful the Jungfrau looks this morning!" exclaimed he, looking at Mary Ashburton.

She thought he meant the mountain, and assented. But he meant her likewise.

"And the mountains, beyond," he continued; "the Monk and the Silver-horn, the Wetter-horn the Schreck-horn, and the Schwarz-horn, all those sublime apostles of Nature, whose sermons are avalanches! Did you ever behold anything more grand!"

"O yes. Mont Blanc is more grand, when you behold it from the hills opposite. It was there that I was most moved by the magnificence of Swiss scenery. It was a morning like this; and the clouds, that were hovering about on their huge, shadowy wings, made the scene only the more magnificent. Before me lay the whole panorama of the Alps; pine forests standing dark and solemn at the base of the mountains; and half-way up a veil of mist; above which rose the snowy summits, and sharp needles of rock, which seemed to float in the air, like a fairy world. Then the glaciersstood on either side, winding down through the mountain ravines; and, high above all, rose the white, dome-like summit of Mont Blanc. And ever and anon from the shroud of mist came the awful sound of an avalanche, and a continual roar, as of the wind through a forest of pines, filled the air. It was the roar of the Arve and Aveiron, breaking from their icy fountains. Then the mists began to pass away; and it seemed as if the whole firmament were rolling together. It recalled to my mind that sublime passage in the Apocalypse; 'I saw a great white throne; and him that sat thereon; before whose face the heavens and the earth fled away, and found no place!' O, I cannot believe that upon this earth there is a more magnificent scene."