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"And what do you think of Heidelberg and the old castle up
there?" said he, as they seated themselves at the
breakfast-table.

"Last night the town seemed very long to me," replied Flemming; "and
as to the castle, I have as yet had but a glimpse of it through the
mist. They tell me there is nothing finer in its way, excepting the
Alhambra of Granada; and no doubt I shall find it so. Only I wish
the stone were gray and not red. But, red or gray, I foresee that I
shall waste many a long hour in its desolate halls. Pray, does
anybody live up there now-a-days?"

"Nobody," answered the Baron, "but the man, who shows the
Heidelberg Ton, and Monsieur Charles de Grainberg, a Frenchman, who
has been there sketching ever since the year eighteen-hundred and
ten. He has, moreover, written a super-magnificent description of
the ruin, in which he says, that during the day only birds of prey
disturb it with their piercing cries, and at night, screech-owls,
and other fallow deer. These are his own words. You must buy his
book and his sketches."

"Yes, the quotation and the tone of your voice will certainly
persuade me so to do."

"Take his or none, my friend, for you will find no others. And
seriously, his sketches are very good. There is one on the wall
there, which is beautiful, save and except that straddle-bug figure
among the bushes in the corner."

"But is there no ghost, no haunted chamber in the old castle?"
asked Flemming, after casting a hasty glance at the picture.

"Oh, certainly," replied the Baron; "there are two. There is the
ghost of the Virgin Mary in Ruprecht's Tower, and the Devil in the
Dungeon."

"Ha! that is grand!" exclaimed Flemming, with evident delight.
"Tell me the whole story, quickly! I am as curious as a child."

"It is a tale of the times of Louis the Debonnaire," said the
Baron, with a smile; "a mouldy tradition of a credulous age. His
brother Frederick lived here in the castle with him, and had a
flirtation with Leonore von Luzelstein, a lady of the court, whom he
afterwards despised, and was consequently most cordially hated by
her. Frompolitical motives he was equally hateful to certain petty
German tyrants, who, in order to effect his ruin, accused him of
heresy. But his brother Louis would not deliver him up to their
fury, and they resolved to effect by stratagem, what they could not
by intrigue. Accordingly, Leonore von Luzelstein, disguised as the
Virgin Mary, and the father confessor of the Elector, in the costume
of Satan, made their appearance in the Elector's bed-chamber at
midnight, and frightened him so horribly, that he consented to
deliver up his brother into the hands of two Black Knights, who
pretended to be ambassadors from the Vehm-Gericht. They proceeded
together to Frederick's chamber; where luckily old Gemmingen, a
brave soldier, kept guard behind the arras. The monk went foremost
in his Satanic garb; but, no sooner had he set foot in the prince's
bed-chamber, than the brave Gemmingen drew his sword, and said
quaintly, `Die, wretch!' and so he died. The rest took to their
heels, and were heard of no more. And now the souls of Leonore and
the monk haunt the scene of their midnight crime. You will find the
story in Grainberg's book, worked up with a kind of red-morocco and
burnt-cork sublimity, and great melo-dramatic clanking of chains,
and hooting of owls, and other fallow deer!"

"After breakfast," said Flemming, "we will go up to the castle. I
must get acquainted with this mirror of owls, this modern Till
Eulenspiegel. See what a glorious morning we have! It is truly a
wondrous winter! what summer sunshine; what soft Venetian fogs! How
the wanton, treacherous air coquets with the old gray-beard trees!
Such weather makes the grass and our beards grow apace! But we have
an old saying in English, that winter never rots in the sky. So he
will come down at last in his old-fashioned, mealy coat. We shall
have snow in spring; and the blossoms will be all snow-flakes. And
afterwards a summer, which will be no summer, but, as Jean Paul
says, only a winter painted green. Is it not so?"

"Unless I am much deceived in the climate of Heidelberg," replied
the Baron, "we shall not have to wait long for snow. We have sudden
changes here, and I should not marvel much if it snowed before
night."

"The greater reason for making good use of the morning sunshine,
then. Let us hasten to the castle, after which my heart yearns."




CHAPTER VII. LIVES OF SCHOLARS.



The forebodings of the Baron proved true. In the afternoon the
weather changed. The western wind began to blow, and its breath drew
a cloud-veil over the face of heaven, as a breath does over the
human face in a mirror. Soon the snow began to fall. Athwart the
distant landscape it swept like a white mist. The storm-wind came
from the Alsatian hills, and struck the dense clouds aslant through
the air. And ever faster fell the snow, a roaring torrent from those
mountainous clouds. The setting sun glared wildly from the summit of
the hills, and sank like a burning ship at sea, wrecked in the
tempest. Thus the evening set in; and winter stood at the gate
wagging his white and shaggy beard, like an old harper, chanting an
old rhyme:--"How cold it is! how cold it is!"

"I like such a storm as this," said Flemming, who stood at the
window, looking out into the tempest and the gathering darkness.
"The silent falling of snow is to me one of the most solemn things
in nature. The fall of autumnal leaves does not so much affect me.
But the driving storm is grand. It startles me; it awakens me. It is
wild and woful, like my own soul. I cannot help thinking of the sea;
how the waves run and toss their arms about,--and the wind plays on
those great harps, made by the shrouds and masts of ships. Winter is
here in earnest! Whew! How the old churl whistles and threshes the
snow! Sleet and rain are falling too. Already the trees are bearded
with icicles; and the two broad branches of yonder pine look like
the white mustache of some old German Baron."

"And to-morrow it will look more wintry still," said his friend.
"We shall wake up and find that the frost-spirit has been at work
all night building Gothic Cathedrals on our windows, just as the
devil built the Cathedral of Cologne. Sodraw the curtains, and come
sit here by the warm fire."

"And now," said Flemming, having done as his friend desired,
"tell me something of Heidelberg and its University. I suppose we
shall lead about as solitary and studious a life here as we did of
yore in little Göttingen, with nothing to amuse us, save our own
day-dreams."

"Pretty much so," replied the Baron; "which cannot fail to please
you, since you are in pursuit of tranquillity. As to the University,
it is, as you know, one of the oldest in Germany. It was founded in
the fourteenth century by the Count Palatine Ruprecht, and had in
the first year more than five hundred students, all busily
committing to memory, after the old scholastic wise, the rules of
grammar versified by Alexander de Villa Dei, and the extracts made
by Peter the Spaniard from Michel Psellus's Synopsis of Aristotle's
Organon, and the Categories, with Porphory's Commentaries. Truly, I
do not much wonder, that Eregina Scotus should have been put to
death byhis scholars with their penknives. They must have been
pushed to the very verge of despair."

"What a strange picture a University presents to the imagination.
The lives of scholars in their cloistered stillness;--literary men
of retired habits, and Professors who study sixteen hours a day, and
never see the world but on a Sunday. Nature has, no doubt, for some
wise purpose, placed in their hearts this love of literary labor and
seclusion. Otherwise, who would feed the undying lamp of thought?
But for such men as these, a blast of wind through the chinks and
crannies of this old world, or the flapping of a conqueror's banner,
would blow it out forever. The light of the soul is easily
extinguished. And whenever I reflect upon these things I become
aware of the great importance, in a nation's history, of the
individual fame of scholars and literary men. I fear, that it is far
greater than the world is willing to acknowledge; or, perhaps I
should say, than the world has thought of acknowledging. Blot out
from England's history the names of Chaucer, Shakspere, Spenser, and
Milton only, and how much of her glory would you blot out with them!
Take from Italy such names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michel
Angelo, and Raphael, and how much would still be wanting to the
completeness of her glory! How would the history of Spain look if
the leaves were torn out, on which are written the names of
Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon! What would be the fame of
Portugal, without her Camoens; of France, without her Racine, and
Rabelais, and Voltaire; or Germany, without her Martin Luther, her
Goethe, and Schiller!--Nay, what were the nations of old, without
their philosophers, poets, and historians! Tell me, do not these men
in all ages and in all places, emblazon with bright colors the
armorial bearings of their country? Yes, and far more than this; for
in all ages and all places they give humanity assurance of its
greatness; and say; Call not this time or people wholly barbarous;
for thus much, even then and there, could the human mind achieve!
But the boisterous world has hardlythought of acknowledging all
this. Therein it has shown itself somewhat ungrateful. Else, whence
the great reproach, the general scorn, the loud derision, with
which, to take a familiar example, the monks of the Middle Ages are
regarded! That they slept their lives away is most untrue. For in an
age when books were few,--so few, so precious, that they were often
chained to their oaken shelves with iron chains, like galley-slaves
to their benches, these men, with their laborious hands, copied upon
parchment all the lore and wisdom of the past, and transmitted it to
us. Perhaps it is not too much to say, that, but for these monks,
not one line of the classics would have reached our day. Surely,
then, we can pardon something to those superstitious ages, perhaps
even the mysticism of the scholastic philosophy, since, after all,
we can find no harm in it, only the mistaking of the possible for
the real, and the high aspirings of the human mind after a
long-sought and unknown somewhat. I think the name of Martin Luther,
the monk of Wittemberg, alone sufficient to redeem all monkhoodfrom
the reproach of laziness! If this will not, perhaps the vast folios
of Thomas Aquinas will;--or the countless manuscripts, still
treasured in old libraries, whose yellow and wrinkled pages remind
one of the hands that wrote them, and the faces that once bent over
them."

"An eloquent homily," said the Baron laughing, "a most touching
appeal in behalf of suffering humanity! For my part, I am no friend
of this entire seclusion from the world. It has a very injurious
effect on the mind of a scholar. The Chinese proverb is true; a
single conversation across the table with a wise man, is better than
ten years' mere study of books. I have known some of these literary
men, who thus shut themselves up from the world. Their minds never
come in contact with those of their fellow-men. They read little.
They think much. They are mere dreamers. They know not what is new
nor what is old. They often strike upon trains of thought, which
stand written in good authors some century or so back, and are even
current in the mouths of men aroundthem. But they know it not; and
imagine they are bringing forward something very original, when they
publish their thoughts."

"It reminds me," replied Flemming, "of what Dr. Johnson said of
Goldsmith, when he proposed to travel abroad in order to bring home
improvements;--`He will bring home a wheelbarrow, and call that an
improvement.' It is unfortunately the same with some of these
scholars."

"And the worst of it is," said the Baron, "that, in solitude,
some fixed idea will often take root in the mind, and grow till it
overshadow all one's thoughts. To this must all opinions come; no
thought can enter there, which shall not be wedded to the fixed
idea. There it remains, and grows. It is like the watchman's wife,
in the tower of Waiblingen, who grew to such a size, that she could
not get down the narrow stair-case; and, when her husband died, his
successor was forced to marry the fat widow in the tower."

"I remember an old English comedy," said Flemming laughing, "in
which a scholar is described, as a creature, that can strike fire in
the morning at his tinder-box,--put on a pair of lined
slippers,--sit ruminating till dinner, and then go to his meat when
the bell rings;--one that hath a peculiar gift in a cough, and a
license to spit;--or, if you will have him defined by negatives, he
is one that cannot make a good leg;--one that cannot eat a mess of
broth cleanly. What think you of that?"

"That it is just as people are always represented in English
comedy," said the Baron. "The portrait is
over-charged,--caricatured."

"And yet," continued Flemming, "no longer ago than yesterday, in
the Preface of a work by Dr. Rosenkranz, Professor of Philosophy in
the University of Halle, I read this passage."

He opened a book and read.

"Here in Halle, where we have no public garden and no Tivoli, no
London Exchange, no Paris Chamber of Deputies, no Berlin nor Vienna
Theatres, no Strassburg Minster, nor Salzburg Alps,--no Grecian
ruins nor fantastic Catholicism, in fine, nothing, which after one's
daily task is finished, can divert and refresh him, without his
knowing or caring how,--I consider the sight of a proof-sheet quite
as delightful as a walk in the Prater of Vienna. I fill my pipe very
quietly, take out my ink-stand and pens, seat myself in the corner
of my sofa, read, correct, and now for the first time really set
about thinking what I have written. To see this origin of a book,
this metamorphosis of manuscript into print, is a delight to which I
give myself up entirely. Look you, this melancholy pleasure, which
would have furnished the departed Voss with worthy matter for more
than one blessed Idyl--(the more so, as on such occasions, I am
generally arrayed in a morning gown, though I am sorry to say, not a
calamanco one, with great flowers;) this melancholy pleasure was
already grown here in Halle to a sweet, pedantic habit. Since I
began my hermit's life here, I have been printing; and so long as I
remain here, I shall keep on printing. In all probability, I shall
die with a proof-sheet in my hand."

"This," said Flemming, closing the book, "is no caricature by a
writer of comedy, but a portrait by a man's own hand. We can see by
it how easily, under certain circumstances, one may glide into
habits of seclusion, and in a kind of undress, slipshod hardihood,
with a pipe and a proof-sheet, defy the world. Into this state
scholars have too often fallen; thus giving some ground for the
prevalent opinion, that scholarship and rusticity are inseparable.
To me, I confess, it is painful to see the scholar and the world
assume so often a hostile attitude, and set each other at defiance.
Surely, it is a characteristic trait of a great and liberal mind,
that it recognises humanity in all its forms and conditions. I am a
student;--and always, when I sit alone at night, I recognise the
divinity of the student, as she reveals herself to me in the smoke
of the midnight lamp. But, because solitude and books are not
unpleasant to me,--nay, wished-for,--sought after,--shall I say to
my brother, Thou fool! Shall I take the world by the beard and say,
Thou art old, and mad!--Shall I look society in the face and say,
Thou art heartless!--Heartless! Beware of that word! Life, says very
wisely the good Jean Paul, Life in every shape, should be precious
to us, for the same reason that the Turks carefully collect every
scrap of paper that comes in their way, because the name of God may
be written upon it. Nothing is more true than this, yet nothing more
neglected!"

"If it be painful to see this misunderstanding between scholars
and the world," said the Baron, "I think it is still more painful to
see the private sufferings of authors by profession. How many have
languished in poverty, how many died broken-hearted, how many gone
mad with over-excitement and disappointed hopes! How instructive and
painfully interesting are their lives! with so many weaknesses,--so
much to pardon,--so much to pity,--so much to admire! I think he was
not so far out of the way, who said, that, next to the Newgate
Calendar, the Biography of Authors is the most sickening chapter in
the history of man."

"It is indeed enough to make one's heart ache!" interrupted
Flemming. "Only think of Johnson and Savage, rambling about the
streets of London at midnight, without a place to sleep in; Otway
starved to death; Cowley mad, and howling like a dog, through the
aisles of Chichester Cathedral, at the sound of church music; and
Goldsmith, strutting up Fleet Street in his peach-blossom coat, to
knock a bookseller over the pate with one of his own volumes; and
then, in his poverty, about to marry his landlady in Green Arbour
Court."

"A life of sorrow and privation, a hard life, indeed, do these
poor devil authors have of it," replied the Baron; "and then at last
must get them to the work-house, or creep away into some hospital to
die."

"After all," said Flemming with a sigh, "poverty is not a
vice."

"But something worse," interrupted the Baron; "as Dufresny said,
when he married his laundress, because he could not pay her bill.
Hewas the author, as you know, of the opera of Lot; at whose
representation the great pun was made;--I say the great pun, as we
say the great ton of Heidelberg. As one of the performers was
singing the line, `L'amour a vaincu Loth,' (vingt culottes,) a voice
from the pit cried out, `Qu'il en donne une à l'auteur!'"

Flemming laughed at the unseasonable jest; and then, after a
short pause, continued;

"And yet, if you look closely at the causes of these calamities
of authors, you will find, that many of them spring from false and
exaggerated ideas of poetry and the poetic character; and from
disdain of common sense, upon which all character, worth having, is
founded. This comes from keeping aloof from the world, apart from
our fellow-men; disdainful of society, as frivolous. By too much
sitting still the body becomes unhealthy; and soon the mind. This is
nature's law. She will never see her children wronged. If the mind,
which rules the body, ever forgets itself so far as to trample upon
its slave, the slave is never generousenough to forgive the injury;
but will rise and smite its oppressor. Thus has many a monarch mind
been dethroned."

"After all," said the Baron, "we must pardon much to men of
genius. A delicate organization renders them keenly susceptible to
pain and pleasure. And then they idealize every thing; and, in the
moonlight of fancy, even the deformity of vice seems beautiful."

"And this you think should be forgiven?"

"At all events it is forgiven. The world loves a spice of
wickedness. Talk as you will about principle, impulse is more
attractive, even when it goes too far. The passions of youth, like
unhooded hawks, fly high, with musical bells upon their jesses; and
we forget the cruelty of the sport in the dauntless bearing of the
gallant bird."

"And thus doth the world and society corrupt the scholar!"
exclaimed Flemming.

Here the Baron rang, and ordered a bottle of Prince Metternich.
He then very slowly filled his pipe, and began to smoke. Flemming
was lost in a day-dream.




CHAPTER VIII. LITERARY FAME.



Time has a Doomsday-Book, upon whose pages he is continually
recording illustrious names. But, as often as a new name is written
there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated
characters, never to be effaced. These are the high nobility of
Nature,--Lords of the Public Domain of Thought. Posterity shall
never question their titles. But those, whose fame lives only in the
indiscreet opinion of unwise men, must soon be as well forgotten, as
if they had never been. To this great oblivion must most men come.
It is better, therefore, that they should soon make up their minds
to this; well knowing, that, as their bodies must ere long be
resolved into dust again, and their graves tell no tales of them; so
musttheir names likewise be utterly forgotten, and their most
cherished thoughts, purposes, and opinions have no longer an
individual being among men; but be resolved and incorporated into
the universe of thought. If, then, the imagination can trace the
noble dust of heroes, till we find it stopping a beer-barrel, and
know that

"Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay,

May stop a hole to keep the wind away;"

not less can it trace the noble thoughts of great men, till it
finds them mouldered into the common dust of conversation, and used
to stop men's mouths, and patch up theories, to keep out the flaws
of opinion. Such, for example, are all popular adages and wise
proverbs, which are now resolved into the common mass of thought;
their authors forgotten, and having no more an individual being
among men.

It is better, therefore, that men should soon make up their minds
to be forgotten, and look about them, or within them, for some
higher motive, in what they do, than the approbation of men, which is
Fame; namely, their duty; that they should be constantly and quietly
at work, each in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving
their fame to take care of itself. Difficult must this indeed be, in
our imperfection; impossible perhaps to achieve it wholly. Yet the
resolute, the indomitable will of man can achieve much,--at times
even this victory over himself; being persuaded, that fame comes
only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is
destiny.

It has become a common saying, that men of genius are always in
advance of their age; which is true. There is something equally
true, yet not so common; namely, that, of these men of genius, the
best and bravest are in advance not only of their own age, but of
every age. As the German prose-poet says, every possible future is
behind them. We cannot suppose, that a period of time will ever
come, when the world, or any considerable portion of it shall have
come up abreast with these great minds, so as fully to comprehend
them.

And oh! how majestically they walk in history; some like the sun,
with all his travelling glories round him; others wrapped in gloom,
yet glorious as a night with stars. Through the else silent darkness
of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn footsteps.
Onward they pass, like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision
of an earthly Paradise, attendant angels bearing golden lights
before them, and, above and behind, the whole air painted with seven
listed colors, as from the trail of pencils!

And yet, on earth, these men were not happy,--not all happy, in
the outward circumstance of their lives. They were in want, and in
pain, and familiar with prison-bars, and the damp, weeping walls of
dungeons! Oh, I have looked with wonder upon those, who, in sorrow
and privation, and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the
shadow of death, have worked right on to the accomplishment of their
great purposes; toiling much, enduring much, fulfilling much;--and
then, with shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung, have laid
themselves down in the grave, and slept the sleep of death,--and the
world talks of them, while they sleep!

It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings had but
sanctified them! As if the death-angel, in passing, had touched them
with the hem of his garment, and made them holy! As if the hand of
disease had been stretched out over them only to make the sign of
the cross upon their souls! And as in the sun's eclipse we can
behold the great stars shining in the heavens, so in this life
eclipse have these men beheld the lights of the great eternity,
burning solemnly and forever!

This was Flemming's reverie. It was broken by the voice of the
Baron, suddenly exclaiming;

"An angel is flying over the house!--Here; in this goblet,
fragrant as the honey of Hymettus, fragrant as the wild flowers in
the Angel's Meadow, I drink to the divinity of thy dreams."

"This is all sunshine," said Flemming, as he drank. "The wine of
the Prince, and the Prince of wines. By the way, did you ever read
that brilliant Italian dithyrambic, Redi's Bacchus in Tuscany? an ode
which seems to have been poured out of the author's soul, as from a
golden pitcher,

`Filled with the wine

Of the vine

Benign,

That flames so red in Sansavine.'

He calls the Montepulciano the king of all wines."

"Prince Metternich," said the Baron, "is greater than any king in
Italy; and I wonder, that this precious wine has never inspired a
German poet to write a Bacchus on the Rhine. Many little songs we
have on this theme, but none very extraordinary. The best are Max
Schenkendorf's Song of the Rhine, and the Song of Rhine Wine, by
Claudius, a poet who never drank Rhenish without sugar. We will
drink for him a blessing on the Rhine."

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