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"Life is one, and universal; its forms many and individual.
Throughout this beautiful and wonderful creation there is
never-ceasing motion, without rest by night or day, ever weaving to
and fro. Swifter than a weaver's shuttle it flies from Birth to
Death, from Death to Birth; from the beginning seeks the end, and
finds it not, for the seeming end is only a dim beginning of a new
out-going and endeavour after the end. As the ice upon the mountain,
when the warm breath of the summer sun breathes upon it, melts, and
divides into drops, each of which reflects an image of the sun; so
life, in the smile of God's love, divides itself into separate
forms, each bearing in it and reflecting an image of God's love. Of
all these forms the highest and most perfect inits god-likeness is
the human soul. The vast cathedral of Nature is full of holy
scriptures, and shapes of deep, mysterious meaning; but all is
solitary and silent there; no bending knee, no uplifted eye, no lip
adoring, praying. Into this vast cathedral comes the human soul,
seeking its Creator; and the universal silence is changed to sound,
and the sound is harmonious, and has a meaning, and is comprehended
and felt. It was an ancient saying of the Persians, that the waters
rush from the mountains and hurry forth into all the lands to find
the Lord of the Earth; and the flame of the Fire, when it awakes,
gazes no more upon the ground, but mounts heavenward to seek the
Lord of Heaven; and here and there the Earth has built the great
watch-towers of the mountains, and they lift their heads far up into
the sky, and gaze ever upward and around, to see if the Judge of the
World comes not! Thus in Nature herself, without man, there lies a
waiting, and hoping, a looking and yearning, after an unknown
somewhat. Yes; when, above there, where the mountain lifts its head
over all others, that it may be alone with the clouds and storms of
heaven, the lonely eagle looks forth into the gray dawn, to see if
the day comes not! when, by the mountain torrent, the brooding raven
listens to hear if the chamois is returning from his nightly pasture
in the valley; and when the soon uprising sun calls out the spicy
odors of the thousand flowers, the Alpine flowers, with heaven's
deep blue and the blush of sunset on their leaves;--then there
awakes in Nature, and the soul of man can see and comprehend it, an
expectation and a longing for a future revelation of God's majesty.
It awakens, also, when in the fulness of life, field and forest rest
at noon, and through the stillness is heard only the song of the
grasshopper and the hum of the bee; and when at evening the singing
lark, up from the sweet-smelling vineyards rises, or in the later
hours of night Orion puts on his shining armour, to walk forth in
the fields of heaven. But in the soul of man alone is this longing
changed to certainty and fulfilled. For lo! thelight of the sun and
the stars shines through the air, and is nowhere visible and seen;
the planets hasten with more than the speed of the storm through
infinite space, and their footsteps are not heard, but where the
sunlight strikes the firm surface of the planets, where the
stormwind smites the wall of the mountain cliff, there is the one
seen and the other heard. Thus is the glory of God made visible, and
may be seen, where in the soul of man it meets its likeness
changeless and firm-standing. Thus, then, stands Man;--a mountain on
the boundary between two worlds;--its foot in one, its summit
far-rising into the other. From this summit the manifold landscape
of life is visible, the way of the Past and Perishable, which we
have left behind us; and, as we evermore ascend, bright glimpses of
the daybreak of Eternity beyond us!"

Flemming would fain have interrupted this discourse at times, to
answer and inquire, but the Professor went on, warming and glowing
more andmore. At length, there was a short pause, and Flemming
said;

"All these indefinite longings,--these yearnings after an unknown
somewhat, I have felt and still feel within me; but not yet their
fulfilment."

"That is because you have not faith;" answered the Professor.
"The Present is an age of doubt and disbelief, and darkness; out of
which shall arise a clear and bright Hereafter. In the second part
of Goethe's Faust, there is a grand and striking scene, where in the
classical Walpurgis Night, on the Pharsalian Plains, the mocking
Mephistopheles sits down between the solemn antique Sphinxes, and
boldly questions them, and reads their riddles. The red light of
innumerable watch-fires glares all round about, and shines upon the
terrible face of the arch-scoffer; while on either side, severe,
majestic, solemnly serene, we behold the gigantic forms of the
children of Chimæra, half buried in the earth, their mild eyes
gazing fixedly, as if they heard through the midnight, the
swift-rushing wings of the Stymphalides, striving to outstrip the
speed of Alcides' arrows! Angry griffins are near them; and not far
are Sirens, singing their wondrous songs from the rocking branches
of the willow trees! Even thus does a scoffing and unbelieving
Present sit down, between an unknown Future and a too believing
Past, and question and challenge the gigantic forms of faith, half
buried in the sands of Time, and gazing forward steadfastly into the
night, whilst sounds of anger and voices of delight alternate vex
and soothe the ear of man!--But the time will come, when the soul of
man shall return again childlike and trustful to its faith in God;
and look God in the face and die; for it is an old saying, full of
deep, mysterious meaning, that he must die, who hath looked upon a
God. And this is the fate of the soul, that it should die
continually. No sooner here on earth does it awake to its peculiar
being, than it struggles to behold and comprehend the Spirit of
Life. In the first dim twilight of its existence, it beholds this
spirit, is pervaded by its energies,--is quick and creative likethe
spirit itself, and yet slumbers away into death after having seen
it. But the image it has seen, remains, in the eternal procreation,
as a homogeneal existence, is again renewed, and the seeming death,
from moment to moment, becomes the source of kind after kind of
existences in ever-ascending series. The soul aspires ever onward to
love and to behold. It sees the image more perfect in the
brightening twilight of the dawn, in the ever higher-rising sun. It
sleeps again, dying in the clearer vision; but the image seen
remains as a permanent kind; and the slumberer awakes anew and ever
higher after its own image, till at length, in the full blaze of
noonday, a being comes forth, which, like the eagle, can behold the
sun and die not. Then both live on, even when this bodily element,
the mist and vapor through which the young eagle gazed, dissolves
and falls to earth."

"I am not sure that I understand you," said Flemming; "but if I
do, you mean to say, that, as the body continually changes and takes
unto itselfnew properties, and is not the same to-day as yesterday,
so likewise the soul lays aside its idiosyncrasies, and is changed
by acquiring new powers, and thus may be said to die. And hence,
properly speaking, the soul lives always in the Present, and has,
and can have, no Future; for the Future becomes the Present, and the
soul that then lives in me is a higher and more perfect soul; and so
onward forevermore."

"I mean what I say," continued the Professor; "and can find no
more appropriate language to express my meaning than that which I
have used. But as I said before, pardon must be granted to the
novelty of words, when it serves to illustrate the obscurity of
things. And I think you will see clearly from what I have said, that
this earthly life, when seen hereafter from heaven, will seem like
an hour passed long ago, and dimly remembered;--that long,
laborious, full of joys and sorrows as it is, it will then have
dwindled down to a mere point, hardly visible to the far-reaching
ken of the disembodied spirit. But the spirit itself soars onward.
And thus death is neither an end nor a beginning. It is a transition
not from one existence to another, but from one state of existence
to another. No link is broken in the chain of being; any more than
in passing from infancy to manhood, from manhood to old age. There
are seasons of reverie and deep abstraction, which seem to me
analogous to death. The soul gradually loses its consciousness of
what is passing around it; and takes no longer cognizance of objects
which are near. It seems for the moment to have dissolved its
connexion with the body. It has passed as it were into another state
of being. It lives in another world. It has flown over lands and
seas; and holds communion with those it loves, in distant regions of
the earth, and the more distant heaven. It sees familiar faces, and
hears beloved voices, which to the bodily senses are no longer
visible and audible. And this likewise is death; save that when we
die, the soul returns no more to the dwelling it has left."

"You seem to take it for granted," interrupted Flemming, "that, in
our reveries, the soul really goes out of the body into distant
places, instead of summoning up their semblance within itself by the
power of memory and imagination!"

"Something I must take for granted," replied the Professor. "We
will not discuss that point now. I speak not without forethought.
Just observe what a glorious thing human life is, when seen in this
light; and how glorious man's destiny. I am; thou art; he is! seems
but a school-boy's conjugation. But therein lies a great mystery.
These words are significant of much. We behold all round about us
one vast union, in which no man can labor for himself without
laboring at the same time for all others; a glimpse of truth, which
by the universal harmony of things becomes an inward benediction,
and lifts the soul mightily upward. Still more so, when a man
regards himself as a necessary member of this union. The feeling of
our dignity and our power grows strong, when we say to ourselves; My
being is not objectless and in vain; I am a necessary link in the
great chain, which, from the full development of consciousness in
the first man, reaches forward into eternity. All the great, and
wise, and good among mankind, all the benefactors of the human race,
whose names I read in the world's history, and the still greater
number of those, whose good deeds have outlived their names,--all
those have labored for me. I have entered into their harvest. I walk
the green earth, which they inhabited. I tread in their footsteps,
from which blessings grow. I can undertake the sublime task, which
they once undertook, the task of making our common brotherhood wiser
and happier. I can build forward, where they were forced to leave
off; and bring nearer to perfection the great edifice which they
left uncompleted. And at length I, too, must leave it, and go hence.
O, this is the sublimest thought of all! I can never finish the
noble task; therefore, so sure as this task is my destiny, I can
never cease to work, and consequently never cease to be. What men
call death cannot break off this task, which is never-ending;
consequently no periodis set to my being, and I am eternal. I lift
my head boldly to the threatening mountain peaks, and to the roaring
cataract, and to the storm-clouds swimming in the fire-sea overhead
and say; I am eternal, and defy your power! Break, break over me!
and thou Earth, and thou Heaven, mingle in the wild tumult! and ye
Elements foam and rage, and destroy this atom of dust,--this body,
which I call mine! My will alone, with its fixed purpose, shall
hover brave and triumphant over the ruins of the universe; for I
have comprehended my destiny; and it is more durable than ye! It is
eternal; and I, who recognise it, I likewise am eternal! Tell me, my
friend, have you no faith in this?"

"I have;" answered Flemming, and there was another pause. He then
said;

"I have listened to you patiently and without interruption. Now
listen to me. You complain of the skepticism of the age. This is one
form in which the philosophic spirit of the age presents itself. Let
me tell you, that another form, whichit assumes, is that of poetic
reverie. Plato of old had dreams like these; and the Mystics of the
Middle Ages; and still their disciples walk in the cloud-land and
dream-land of this poetic philosophy. Pleasant and cool upon their
souls lie the shadows of the trees under which Plato taught. From
their whispering leaves comes wafted across the noise of populous
centuries a solemn and mysterious sound, which to them is the voice
of the Soul of the World. All nature has become spiritualized and
transfigured; and, wrapt in beautiful, vague dreams of the real and
the ideal, they live in this green world, like the little child in
the German tale, who sits by the margin of a woodland lake, and
hears the blue heaven and the branches overhead dispute with their
reflection in the water, which is the reality and which the image. I
willingly confess, that such day-dreams as these appeal strongly to
my imagination. Visitants and attendants are they of those lofty
souls, which, soaring ever higher and higher, build themselves nests
under the very eaves of the stars, forgetful that theycannot live on
air, but must descend to earth for food. Yet I recognise them as
day-dreams only; as shadows, not substantial things. What I mainly
dislike in the New Philosophy, is the cool impertinence with which
an old idea, folded in a new garment, looks you in the face and
pretends not to know you, though you have been familiar friends from
childhood. I remember an English author who, in speaking of your
German Philosophies, says very wisely; `Often a proposition of
inscrutable and dread aspect, when resolutely grappled with, and
torn from its shady den, and its bristling entrenchments of uncouth
terminology,--and dragged forth into the open light of day, to be
seen by the natural eye and tried by merely human understanding,
proves to be a very harmless truth, familiar to us from old,
sometimes so familiar as to be a truism. Too frequently the anxious
novice is reminded of Dryden in the Battle of the Books; there is a
helmet of rusty iron, dark, grim, gigantic; and within it, at the
farthest corner, is a head no bigger than a walnut.'--Can you
believe, thatthese words ever came from the lips of Carlyle! He has
himself taken up the uncouth terminology of late; and many pure,
simple minds are much offended at it. They seem to take it as a
personal insult. They are angry; and deny the just meed of praise.
It is, however, hardly worth while to lose our presence of mind. Let
us rather profit as we may, even from this spectacle, and recognise
the monarch in his masquerade. For, hooded and wrapped about with
that strange and antique garb, there walks a kingly, a most royal
soul, even as the Emperor Charles walked amid solemn cloisters under
a monk's cowl;--a monarch still in soul. Such things are not new in
the history of the world. Ever and anon they sweep over the earth,
and blow themselves out soon, and then there is quiet for a season,
and the atmosphere of Truth seems more serene. Why would you preach
to the wind? Why reason with thunder-showers? Better sit quiet, and
see them pass over like a pageant, cloudy, superb, and vast."

The Professor smiled self-complacently, but said not a word.
Flemming continued;

"I will add no more than this;--there are many speculations in
Literature, Philosophy, and Religion, which, though pleasant to walk
in, and lying under the shadow of great names, yet lead to no
important result. They resemble rather those roads in the western
forests of my native land, which, though broad and pleasant at
first, and lying beneath the shadow of great branches, finally
dwindle to a squirrel track, and run up a tree!"

The Professor hardly knew whether he should laugh or be offended
at this sally; and, laying his hand upon Flemming's arm, he said
seriously;

"Believe me, my young friend, the time will come, when you will
think more wisely on these things. And with you, I trust, that time
will soon come; since it moves more speedily with some than with
others. For what is Time? The shadow on the dial,--the striking of
the clock,--the running of the sand,--day and night,--summerand
winter,--months, years, centuries! These are but arbitrary and
outward signs,--the measure of Time, not Time itself! Time is the
Life of the Soul. If not this, then tell me what it is?"

The high and animated tone of voice in which the Professor
uttered these words aroused the Baron from his sleep; and, not
distinctly comprehending what was said, but thinking the Professor
asked what time it was, he innocently exclaimed;

"I should think it must be near midnight!"

This somewhat disconcerted the Professor, who took his leave soon
afterward. When he was gone the Baron said;

"Excuse me for treating your guest so cavalierly. His
transcendentalism annoyed me not a little; and I took refuge in
sleep. One would think, to judge by the language of this sect, that
they alone saw any beauty in Nature; and, when I hear one of them
discourse, I am instantly reminded of Goethe's Baccalaureus, when he
exclaims; `The world was not before I created it; Ibrought the sun
up out of the sea; with me began the changeful course of the moon;
the day decked itself on my account; the earth grew green and
blossomed to meet me; at my nod in that first night, the pomp of all
the stars developed itself; who but I set you free from all the
bonds of Philisterlike, contracting thoughts? I, however,
emancipated as my mind assures me I am, gladly pursue my inward
light, advance boldly in a transport peculiarly my own, the bright
before me, and the dark behind!'--Do you not see a resemblance? O,
they might be modest enough to confess, that one straggling ray of
light may, by some accident, reach the blind eyes of even us poor,
benighted heathens?"

"Alas! how little veneration we have!" said Flemming. "I could
not help closing the discussion with a jest. An ill-timed levity
often takes me by surprise. On all such occasions I think of a scene
at the University, where, in the midst of a grave discussion on the
possibility of Absolute Motion, a scholar said he had seen a rock
splitopen, from which sprang a toad, who could not be supposed to
have any knowledge of the external world, and consequently his
motion must have been absolute. The learned Professor, who presided
on that occasion, was hardly more startled and astonished, than was
our learned Professor, five minutes ago. But come; wind up your
watch, and let us go to bed."

"By the way," said the Baron, "did you mind what a curious head
he has. There are two crowns upon it."

"That is a sign," replied Flemming, "that he will eat his bread
in two kingdoms."

"I think the poor man would be very thankful," said the Baron
with a smile, "if he were always sure of eating it in one. He is
what the Transcendentalists call a god-intoxicated man; and I advise
him, as Sauteul advised Bossuet, to go to Patmos and write a new
Apocalypse."




CHAPTER VII. MILL-WHEELS AND OTHER WHEELS.



A few days after this the Baron received letters from his sister,
telling him, that her physicians had prescribed a few weeks at the
Baths of Ems, and urging him to meet her there before the
fashionable season.

"Come," said he to Flemming; "make this short journey with me. We
will pass a few pleasant days at Ems, and visit the other
watering-places of Nassau. It will drive away the melancholy
day-dreams that haunt you. Perhaps some future bride is even now
waiting for you, with dim presentiments and undefined longings, at
the Serpent's Bath."

"Or some widow of Ems, with a cork-leg!" said Flemming, smiling;
and then added, in a toneof voice half jest, half earnest,
"Certainly; let us go in pursuit of her;--

`Whoe'er she be,

That not impossible she,

That shall command my heart and me.

Where'er she lie,

Hidden from mortal eye,

In shady leaves of destiny.'"

They started in the afternoon for Frankfort, pursuing their way
slowly along the lovely Bergstrasse, famed throughout Germany for
its beauty. They passed the ruined house where Martin Luther lay
concealed after the Diet of Worms, and through the village of
Handschuhsheimer, as old as the days of King Pepin the Short,--a
hamlet, lying under the hills, half-buried in blossoms and green
leaves. Close on the right rose the mountains of the mysterious
Odenwald; and on the left lay the Neckar, like a steel bow in the
meadow. Farther westward, a thin, smoky vapor betrayed the course of
the Rhine; beyond which, like a troubled sea, ran the blue,
billowy Alsatian hills. Song of birds, and sound of evening bells,
and fragrance of sweet blossoms filled the air; and silent and slow
sank the broad red sun, half-hidden amid folding clouds.

"We shall not pass the night at Weinheim," said the Baron to the
postilion, who had dismounted to walk up the hill, leading to the
town. "You may drive to the mill in the Valley of Birkenau."

The postilion seized one of his fat horses by the tail, and swung
himself up to his seat again. They rattled through the paved streets
of Weinheim, and took no heed of the host of the Golden Eagle, who
stood so invitingly at the door of his own inn; and the ruins of
Burg Windeck, above there, on its mountain throne, frowned at them
for hurrying by, without staying to do him homage.

"The old ruin looks well from the valley," said the Baron; "but
let us beware of climbing that steep hill. Most travellers are like
children; they must needs touch whatever they behold. They climb up
to every old broken tooth of acastle, which they find on their
way;--get a toilsome ascent and hot sunshine for their pains, and
come down wearied and disappointed. I trust we are wiser."

They crossed the bridge, and turned up the stream, passing under
an arch of stone, which serves as a gateway to this enchanted Valley
of Birkenau. A cool and lovely valley! shut in by high
hills;--shaded by alder-trees and tall poplars, under which rushes
the Wechsnitz, a noisy mountain brook, that ever and anon puts its
broad shoulder to the wheel of a mill, and shows that it can labor
as well as laugh. At one of these mills they stopped for the
night.

A mill forms as characteristic a feature in the romantic German
landscape, as in the romantic German tale. It is not only a mill,
but likewise an ale-house and rural inn; so that the associations it
suggests are not of labor only, but also of pleasure. It stands in
the narrow defile, with its picturesque, thatched roof; thither
throng thepeasants, of a holiday; and there are rustic dances under
the trees.

In the twilight of the fast-approaching summer night, the Baron
and Flemming walked forth along the borders of the stream. As they
heard it, rushing and gushing among the stones and tangled roots,
and the great wheel turning in the current, with its never-ceasing
plash! plash! it brought to their minds that exquisite, simple song
of Goethe, the Youth and the Mill-brook. It was for the moment a
nymph, which sang to them in the voice of the waters.

"I am persuaded," said Flemming, "that, in order fully to
understand and fell the popular poetry of Germany, one must be
familiar with the German landscape. Many sweet little poems are the
outbreaks of momentary feelings;--words, to which the song of birds,
the rustling of leaves, and the gurgle of cool waters form the
appropriate music. Or perhaps I should say they are words, which man
has composed to the music of nature. Can you not, even now, hear
this brooklet tellingyou how it is on its way to the mill, where at
day-break the miller's daughter opens her window, and comes down to
bathe her face in its stream, and her bosom is so full and white,
that it kindles the glow of love in the cool waters!"

"A most delightful ballad, truly," said the Baron. "But like many
others of our little songs, it requires a poet to fell and
understand it. Sing them in the valley and woodland shadows, and
under the leafy roofs of garden walks, and at night, and alone, as
they were written. Sing them not in the loud world,--for the loud
world laughs such things to scorn. It is Mueller who says, in that
little song, where the maiden bids the moon good evening;

`This song was made to be sung at night,

And he who reads it in broad daylight,

Will never read the mystery right;

And yet it is childlike easy!'

He has written a great many pretty songs, in which the momentary,
indefinite longings and impulses of the soul of man find an
expression. Hecalls them the songs of a Wandering Horn-player. There
is one among them much to our present purpose. He expresses in it,
the feeling of unrest and desire of motion, which the sight and
sound of running waters often produce in us. It is entitled,
`Whither?' and is worth repeating to you.

`I heard a brooklet gushing

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