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From its rocky fountain near,

Down into the valley rushing,

So fresh and wondrous clear.

`I know not what came o'er me,

Nor who the counsel gave;

But I must hasten downward,

All with my pilgrim-stave.

`Downward, and ever farther,

And ever the brook beside;

And ever fresher murmured,

And ever clearer the tide.

`Is this the way I was going?

Whither, O brooklet, say!

Thou hast, with thy soft murmur,

Murmured my senses away.

`What do I say of a murmur?

That can no murmur be;

'T is the water-nymphs, that are singing

Their roundelays under me.

`Let them sing, my friend, let them murmur,

And wander merrily near;

The wheels of a mill are going

In every brooklet clear.'"

"There you have the poetic reverie," said Flemming, "and the dull
prose commentary and explanation in matter of fact. The song is
pretty; and was probably suggested by some such scene as this, which
we are now beholding. Doubtless all your old national traditions
sprang up in the popular mind as this song in the poet's."

"Your opinion is certainly correct," answered the Baron; "and yet
all this play of poetic fancy does not prevent me from feeling the
chill night air, and the pangs of hunger. Let us go back to the
mill, and see what our landlady has for supper. Did you observe what
a loud, sharp voice she has?"

"People always have, who live in mills, and near
water-falls."

On the following morning they emerged unwillingly from the green,
dark valley, and journeyed along the level highway to Frankfort,
where in the evening they heard the glorious Don Giovanni of Mozart.
Of all operas this was Flemming's favorite. What rapturous flights
of sound! what thrilling, pathetic chimes! what wild, joyous revelry
of passion! what a delirium of sense!--what an expression of agony
and woe! all the feelings of suffering and rejoicing humanity
sympathized with and finding a voice in those tones. Flemming and
the Baron listened with ever-increasing delight.

"How wonderful this is!" exclaimed Flemming, transported by his
feelings. "How the chorus swells and dies, like the wind of summer!
How those passages of mysterious import seem to wave to and fro,
like the swaying branches of trees; from which anon some solitary
sweetvoice darts off like a bird, and floats away and revels in the
bright, warm sunshine! And then mark! how, amid the chorus of a
hundred voices and a hundred instruments,--of flutes, and drums, and
trumpets,--this universal shout and whirl-wind of the vexed air, you
can so clearly distinguish the melancholy vibration of a single
string, touched by the finger,--a mournful, sobbing sound! Ah, this
is indeed human life! where in the rushing, noisy crowd, and amid
sounds of gladness, and a thousand mingling emotions, distinctly
audible to the ear of thought, are the pulsations of some melancholy
string of the heart, touched by an invisible hand."

Then came, in the midst of these excited feelings, the ballet;
drawing its magic net about the soul. And soon, from the tangled yet
harmonious mazes of the dance, came forth a sylph-like form, her
scarf floating behind her, as if she were fanning the air with
gauze-like wings. Noiseless as a feather or a snow-flake falls, did
her feet touch the earth. She seemed to floatin the air, and the
floor to bend and wave under her, as a branch, when a bird alights
upon it, and takes wing again. Loud and rapturous applause followed
each wonderful step, each voluptuous movement; and, with a flushed
cheek and burning eye, and bosom panting to be free, stood the
gracefully majestic figure for a moment still, and then the winged
feet of the swift dancing-girls glanced round her, and she was lost
again in the throng.

"How truly exquisite this is!" exclaimed the Baron, after joining
loudly in the applause. "What a noble figure! What grace! what
attitudes! How much soul in every motion! how much expression in
every gesture! I assure you, it produces upon me the same effect as
a beautiful poem. It is a poem. Every step is a word; and the whole
together a poem!"

The Baron and Flemming were delighted with the scene; and at the
same time exceedingly amused with the countenance of an old prude in
the next box, who seemed to look upon the wholemagic show, with such
feelings as Michal, Saul's daughter, experienced, when she looked
from her window and saw King David dancing and leaping with his
scanty garments.

"After all," said Flemming, "the old French priest was not so far
out of the way, when he said, in his coarse dialect, that the dance
is the Devil's procession; and paint and ornaments, the whetting of
the devil's sword; and the ring that is made in dancing, the devil's
grindstone, whereon he sharpens his sword; and finally, that a
ballet is the pomp and mass of the Devil, and whosoever entereth
therein, entereth into his pomp and mass; for the woman who singeth
is the prioress of the Devil, and they that answer are clerks, and
they that look on are parishioners, and the cymbals and flutes are
the bells, and the musicians that play are the ministers, of the
Devil."

"No doubt this good lady near us, thinks so likewise," answered
the Baron laughing; "but she likes it, for all that."

When the play was over the Baron begged Flemming to sit still,
till the crowd had gone.

"I have a strange fancy," said he, "whenever I come to the
theatre, to see the end of all things. When the crowd is gone, and
the curtain raised again to air the house, and the lamps are all
out, save here and there one behind the scenes, the contrast with
what has gone before is most impressive. Every thing wears a
dream-like aspect. The empty boxes and stalls,--the silence,--the
smoky twilight, and the magic scene dismantled, produce in me a
strange, mysterious feeling. It is like a dim reflection of a
theatre in water, or in a dusty mirror; and reminds me of some of
Hoffmann's wild Tales. It is a practical moral lesson,--a
commentary on the play, and makes the show complete."

It was truly as he said; only tenfold more desolate, solemn, and
impressive; and produced upon the mind the effect we experience,
when slumber is suddenly broken, and dreams and realities mingle,
and we know not yet whether we sleep or wake. As they at length
passed out through the dimly-lighted passage, they heard a
vulgar-looking fellow, with a sensual face and shaggy whiskers, say
to some persons who were standing near him, and seemed to be
hangers-on of the play-house;

"I shall run her six nights at Munich, and then take her on to
Vienna."

Flemming thought he was speaking of some favorite horse. He was
speaking of his beautiful wife, the ballet-dancer.




CHAPTER VIII. OLD HUMBUG.



What most interested our travellers in the ancient city of
Frankfort, was neither the opera nor the Ariadne of Dannecker, but
the house in which Goethe was born, and the scenes he frequented in
his childhood, and remembered in his old age. Such for example are
the walks around the city, outside the moat; the bridge over the
Maine, with the golden cock on the cross, which the poet beheld and
marvelled at when a boy; the cloister of the Barefooted Friars,
through which he stole with mysterious awe to sit by the
oilcloth-covered table of old Rector Albrecht; and the garden in
which his grandfather walked up and down among fruit-trees and
rose-bushes, in long morning gown, black velvet cap, and the antique
leather gloves, which he annually received as Mayor on
Pipers-Doomsday, representing a kind of middle personage between
Alcinous and Laertes. Thus, O Genius! are thy foot-prints hallowed;
and the star shines forever over the place of thy nativity.

"Your English critics may rail as they list," said the Baron,
while he and Flemming were returning from a stroll in the leafy
gardens, outside the moat; "but, after all, Goethe was a magnificent
old fellow. Only think of his life; his youth of passion,
alternately aspiring and desponding, stormy, impetuous,
headlong;--his romantic manhood, in which passion assumes the form
of strength; assiduous, careful, toiling, without haste, without
rest; and his sublime old age,--the age of serene and classic
repose, where he stands like Atlas, as Claudian has painted him in
the Battle of the Giants, holding the world aloft upon his head, the
ocean-streams hard frozen in his hoary locks."

"A good illustration of what the world calls his
indifferentism."

"And do you know I rather like this indifferentism? Did you never
have the misfortune to live in a community, where a difficulty in
the parish seemed to announce the end of the world? or to know one
of the benefactors of the human race, in the very `storm and
pressure period' of his indiscreet enthusiasm? If you have, I think
you will see something beautiful in the calm and dignified attitude
which the old philosopher assumes."

"It is a pity, that his admirers had not a little of this
philosophic coolness. It amuses me to read the various epithets,
which they apply to him; The Dear, dear Man! The Life-enjoying Man!
The All-sided One! The Representative of Poetry upon earth! The
Many-sided Master-Mind of Germany! His enemies rush into the other
extreme, and hurl at him the fierce names of Old Humbug! and Old
Heathen! which hit like pistol-bullets."

"I confess, he was no saint."

"No; his philosophy is the old ethnic philosophy. You will find
it all in a convenient andconcentrated, portable form in Horace's
beautiful Ode to Thaliarcus. What I most object to in the old
gentleman is his sensuality."

"O nonsense. Nothing can be purer than the Iphigenia; it is as
cold and passionless as a marble statue."

"Very true; but you cannot say the same of some of the Roman
Elegies and of that monstrous book the Elective Affinities."

"Ah, my friend, Goethe is an artist; and looks upon all things as
objects of art merely. Why should he not be allowed to copy in words
what painters and sculptors copy in colors and in marble?"

"The artist shows his character in the choice of his subject.
Goethe never sculptured an Apollo, nor painted a Madonna. He gives
us only sinful Magdalens and rampant Fauns. He does not so much
idealize as realize."

"He only copies nature."

"So did the artists, who made the bronzelamps of Pompeii. Would
you hang one of those in your hall? To say that a man is an artist
and copies nature is not enough. There are two great schools of art;
the imitative and the imaginative. The latter is the most noble, and
most enduring; and Goethe belonged rather to the former. Have you
read Menzel's attack upon him?"

"It is truly ferocious. The Suabian hews into him lustily. I hope
you do not side with him."

"By no means. He goes too far. He blames the poet for not being a
politician. He might as well blame him for not being a missionary to
the Sandwich Islands."

"And what do you think of Eckermann?"

"I think he is a toady; a kind of German Boswell. Goethe knew he
was drawing his portrait, and attitudinized accordingly. He works
very hard to make a Saint Peter out of an old Jupiter, as the
Catholics did at Rome."

"Well; call him Old Humbug, or Old Heathen, or what you please; I
maintain, that, with all his errors and short-comings, he was a
glorious specimen of a man."

"He certainly was. Did it ever occur to you that he was in some
points like Ben Franklin? a kind of rhymed Ben Franklin? The
practical tendency of his mind was the same; his love of science was
the same; his benignant, philosophic spirit was the same; and a vast
number of his little poetic maxims and sooth-sayings seem nothing
more than the worldly wisdom of Poor Richard, versified."

"What most offends me is, that now every German jackass must have
a kick at the dead lion."

"And every one who passes through Weimar must throw a book upon
his grave, as travellers did of old a stone upon the grave of
Manfredi, at Benevento. But, of all that has been said or sung, what
most pleases me is Heine's Apologetic, if I may so call it; in which
he says, that the minor poets, who flourished under the
imperialreign of Goethe `resemble a young forest, where the trees
first show their own magnitude after the oak of a hundred years,
whose branches had towered above and overshadowed them, has fallen.
There was not wanting an opposition, that strove against Goethe,
this majestic tree. Men of the most warring opinions united
themselves for the contest. The adherents of the old faith, the
orthodox, were vexed, that, in the trunk of the vast tree, no niche
with its holy image was to be found; nay, that even the naked Dryads
of paganism were permitted to play their witchery there; and gladly,
with consecrated axe, would they have imitated the holy Boniface,
and levelled the enchanted oak to the ground. The followers of the
new faith, the apostles of liberalism, were vexed on the other hand,
that the tree could not serve as the Tree of Liberty, or, at any
rate, as a barricade. In fact the tree was too high; no one could
plant the red cap upon its summit, or dance the Carmagnole beneath
its branches. The multitude, however, venerated this tree for the
veryreason, that it reared itself with such independent grandeur,
and so graciously filled the world with its odor, while its
branches, streaming magnificently toward heaven, made it appear, as
if the stars were only the golden fruit of its wondrous limbs.'
Don't you think that beautiful?"

"Yes, very beautiful. And I am glad to see, that you can find
something to admire in my favorite author, notwithstanding his
frailties; or, to use an old German saying, that you can drive the
hens out of the garden without trampling down the beds."

"Here is the old gentleman himself!" exclaimed Flemming.

"Where!" cried the Baron, as if for the moment he expected to see
the living figure of the poet walking before them.

"Here at the window,--that full-length cast. Excellent, is it
not! He is dressed, as usual, in his long yellow nankeen surtout,
with a white cravat crossed in front. What a magnificent head! and
what a posture! He stands like a tower ofstrength. And, by Heavens!
he was nearly eighty years old, when that was made."

"How do you know?"

"You can see by the date on the pedestal."


"You are right. And yet how erect he stands, with his square
shoulders braced back, and his hands behind him. He looks as if he
were standing before the fire. I feel tempted to put a live coal
into his hand, it lies so invitingly half-open. Gleim's description
of him, soon after he went to Weimar, is very different from this.
Do you recollect it?"

"No, I do not."

"It is a story, which good old father Gleim used to tell with
great delight. He was one evening reading the Göttingen
Musen-Almanach in a select society at Weimar, when a young man came
in, dressed in a short, green shooting-jacket, booted and spurred,
and having a pair of brilliant, black, Italian eyes. He in turn
offered to read; but finding probably the poetry of the
Musen-Almanach of that year rather too insipid for him, he soon began
to improvise the wildest and most fantastic poems imaginable, and in
all possible forms and measures, all the while pretending to read
from the book. `That is either Goethe or the Devil,' said good old
father Gleim to Wieland, who sat near him. To which the `Great I of
Osmannstadt' replied; `It is both, for he has the Devil in him
to-night; and at such times he is like a wanton colt, that flings
out before and behind, and you will do well not to go too near him!'
"

"Very good!"

"And now that noble figure is but mould. Only a few months ago,
those majestic eyes looked for the last time on the light of a
pleasant spring morning. Calm, like a god, the old man sat; and with
a smile seemed to bid farewell to the light of day, on which he had
gazed for more than eighty years. Books were near him, and the pen
which had just dropped, as it were from his dying fingers. `Open the
shutters, and let in more light!' were the last words that came from
those lips. Slowly stretching forth his hand, he seemed to write
inthe air; and, as it sank down again and was motionless, the spirit
of the old man departed."

"And yet the world goes on. It is strange how soon, when a great
man dies, his place is filled; and so completely, that he seems no
longer wanted. But let us step in here. I wish to buy that cast; and
send it home to a friend."




CHAPTER IX. THE DAYLIGHT OF THE DWARFS, AND THE FALLING STAR.



After lingering a day or two in Frankfort, the two friends struck
across through Hochheim to the Rhine, and then up among the hills of
the Rheingau to Schlangenbad, where they tarried only to bathe, and
to dine; and then pursued their way to Langenschwalbach. The town
lies in a valley, with gently-sloping hills around it, and long
avenues of poplars leading forth into the fields. One interminable
street cuts the town in twain, and there are old houses with curious
faces carved upon their fronts, and dates of the olden time.

Our travellers soon sallied forth from their hotel, impatient to
drink the strength-giving watersof the fountains. They continued
their walk far up the valley under the poplars. The new grain was
waving in the fields; the birds singing in the trees and in the air;
and every thing seemed glad, save a poor old man, who came tottering
out of the woods, with a heavy bundle of sticks on his
shoulders.

Returning upon their steps, they passed down the valley and
through the long street to the tumble-down old Lutheran church. A
flight of stone steps leads from the street to the green terrace or
platform on which the church stands, and which, in ancient times,
was the churchyard, or as the Germans more devoutly say, God's-acre;
where generations are scattered like seeds, and that which is sown
in corruption shall be raised hereafter in incorruption. On the
steps stood an old man,--a very old man,--holding a little girl by
the hand. He took off his greasy cap as they passed, and wished them
good day. His teeth were gone; he could hardly articulate a
syllable. The Baron asked him how old the church was. Hegave no
answer; but when the question was repeated, came close up to them,
and taking off his cap again, turned his ear attentively, and
said;


"I am hard of hearing."

"Poor old man," said Flemming; "He is as much a ruin as the
church we are entering. It will not be long before he, too, shall be
sown as seed in this God's-acre!"

The little girl ran into a house close at hand, and brought out
the great key. The church door swung open, and, descending a few
steps, they passed through a low-roofed passage into the church. All
was in ruin. The gravestones in the pavement were started from their
places; the vaults beneath yawned; the roof above was falling
piecemeal; there were rents in the old tower; and mysterious
passages, and side doors with crazy flights of wooden steps, leading
down into the churchyard. Amid all this ruin, one thing only stood
erect; it was a statue of a knight in armour, standing in a niche
under the pulpit.

"Who is this?" said Flemming to the old sexton; "who is this,
that stands here so solemnly in marble, and seems to be keeping
guard over the dead men below?"

"I do not know," replied the old man; "but I have heard my
grandfather say it was the statue of a great warrior!"

"There is history for you!" exclaimed the Baron. "There is fame!
To have a statue of marble, and yet have your name forgotten by the
sexton of your parish, who can remember only, that he once heard his
grandfather say, that you were a great warrior!"

Flemming made no reply, for he was thinking of the days, when
from that old pulpit, some bold reformer thundered down the first
tidings of a new doctrine, and the roof echoed with the grand old
hymns of Martin Luther.

When he communicated his thoughts to the Baron, the only answer
he received was;

"After all, what is the use of so much preaching? Do you think
the fishes, that heard the sermon of St. Anthony, were any better
than thosewho did not? I commend to your favorable notice the
fish-sermon of this saint, as recorded by Abraham à Santa Clara. You
will find it in your favorite Wonder-Horn."

Thus passed the day at Langenschwalbach; and the evening at the
Allée-Saal was quite solitary; for as yet no company had arrived to
fill its chambers, or sit under the trees before the door. The next
morning even Flemming and the Baron were gone; for the German's
heart was beating with strong desire to embrace his sister; and the
heart of his friend cared little whither he went, sobeit he were not
too much alone.

After a few hours' drive, they were looking down from the summit
of a hill right upon the house-tops of Ems. There it lay, deep sunk
in the hollow beneath them, as if some inhabitant of Sirius, like
him spoken of in Voltaire's tale of Micromegas, held it in the
hollow of his hand. High and peaked rise the hills, that throw their
shadows into this romantic valley, and at their base winds the river
Lahn. Our travellersdrove through the one long street, composed
entirely of hotels and lodging-houses. Sick people looked out of the
windows, as they passed. Others were walking leisurely up and down,
beneath the few decapitated trees, which represent a public
promenade; and a boy, with a blue frock and crimson cap, was driving
three donkeys down the street. In short, they were in a fashionable
watering-place; as yet sprinkled only by a few pattering drops of
the summer rain of strangers, which generally follows the first hot
days.

On alighting at the London Hotel, the Baron found--not his
sister, but only a letter from her, saying she had changed her mind
and gone to the Baths of Franconia. This was a disappointment, which
the Baron pocketed with the letter, and said not a word more about
either. It was his way; his life-philosophy in small things and
great. In the evening, they went to an æsthetic tea, at the house of
the Frau Kranich, the wife of a rich banker of Frankfort.

"I must tell you about this Frau Kranich," said the Baron to
Flemming, on the way. "She is a woman of talent and beauty, and just
in the prime of life. But, unfortunately, very ambitious. Her mania
is, to make a figure in the fashionable world; and to this end she
married a rich banker of Frankfort, old enough to be her father, not
to say her grandfather, hoping, doubtless, that he would soon die;
for, if ever a woman wished to be a widow, she is that woman. But
the old fellow is tough and won't die. Moreover, he is deaf, and
crabbed, and penurious, and half the time bed-ridden. The wife is a
model of virtue, notwithstanding her weakness. She nurses the old
gentleman as if he were a child. And, to crown all, he hates
society, and will not hear of his wife's receiving or going into
company."

"How, then, can she give soirées?" asked Flemming.

"I was just going to tell you," continued the Baron. "The gay
lady has no taste for long evenings with the old gentleman in the
back chamber;--for being thus chained like a criminal
under Mezentius, face to face with a dead body. So she puts him to
bed first, and--"

"Gives him opium."

"Yes, I dare say; and then gives herself a soirée, without his
knowing any thing about it. This course of deception is truly
hateful in itself, and must be particularly so to her, for she is
not a low, or an immoral woman; but one of those who, not having
strength enough to complete the sacrifice they have had strength
enough to commence, are betrayed into a life of duplicity and
falsehood."

They had now reached the house, and were ushered into a room
gaily lighted and filled with guests. The hostess came forward to
receive them, dressed in white, and sailing down the room like a
swan. When the customary salutations had passed and Flemming had
been duly presented, the Baron said, not without a certain degree of
malice;

"And, my dear Frau Kranich, how is your good husband to
night?"

This question was about as discreet as a cannon-ball. But the
lady replied in the simplicity of her heart, and not in the least
disconcerted;

"The same as ever, my dear Baron. It is astonishing how he holds
out. But let us not talk of these things now. I must introduce your
friend to his countryman, the Grand Duke of Mississippi; alike
remarkable for his wealth, his modesty, and the extreme simplicity
of his manners. He drives only six horses. Besides, he is known as a
man of learning and piety;--has his private chapel, and private
clergyman, who always preaches against the vanity of worldly riches.
He has also a private secretary, whose sole duty is to smoke to him,
that he may enjoy the aroma of Spanish cigars, without the trouble
of smoking."

"Decidedly a man of genius!"

Here Flemming was introduced to his illustrious countryman; a
person who seemed to consist chiefly of linen, such a display did he
make of collar, bosom, and wristbands.

"Pray, Mr. Flemming, what do you think of that Rembrandt?" said
he, pointing to a picture onthe wall. "Exquisite picture! The
grandeur of sentiment and splendor of chiaroscuro are of the first
order. Just observe the liquidity of the water, and the silveryness
of the clouds! Great power! There is a bravura of handling in that
picture, Sir, which requires the eye of the connoisseur to
appreciate."

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