object; as at times in some heavenly evenings of Spring all the streets of the City, in which there is no garden growing, are glowing with an intermingled blooming atmosphere, which the whole warm flowery environs inhale. This gentle peculiarly continued enjoyment of love without the object, and without the hot sunglance of rapture, is, like the incessant undulations within the breast occasioned by the breeze of an ether-blue-day and a fresh, green, inimitable landscape.

However, I can offer a consolation as an answer to all former complaints on the subject of thinking about feelings, the consolation of their resurrection through art. When the object disappears, and after it, the animated hour which it afforded, expires, then art presents itself to us, and wakes up what had died.Painting gives us back the object and with it the animated hour -music gives inspiration and with it the object-poetry gives both alternately.

When painting retains steadily the wild fire of the moment, then the charming landscape, the charming eye, the charming circle incessantly cast their glances at thee, and thy highest enjoyment returns every day, and the sun stands still before the painter (otherwise than before the life-destroying Joshua) only to illumine warm life continually.

What hours and souls and bodies range themselves in order to prepare for thee only, an inimitable internal festival, which thou receivest from invisible hands! Weep as thou only wilt, abundant and blissful tears; music echoes thy heart to thee and brings to thee all thy tears again.

And then in fine, thou, good poetry, givest back in a lively manner-with all the riches of both the sister arts-that which enraptures and glorifies mankind, which can reproduce every memory that has become almost obliterated, and in the light of thy evening beams, every morning ray of life returns. To a man, who bears the extraordinary hours of life gloomily in his breast, but without the power to animate and illuminate them again, it repeats the images which surprized him, the tones which he never would forget, and the earth and the heaven which only on one occasion, was presented to him in such a manner.

In its outlines of life, the inequalities of the same vanish, like the shadows on the moon when it round itself and conceals its mountains. Yet, it opens not the old paradise, which is closed behind us, but a new one into which we can enter, and on its light clouds, like Ossian's spirits on theirs, find again a heaven for our souls. Therefore complain not over the fleetness of enjoyment, since art lends you its eternity. Or if thou complainest yet, that the rapture and inspiration last, only so long as the object which calls it into existence, abides, then gladden and inspire thyself with an object, which can never depart from thee, for it is there

fore at the same time, the grandest and the finest, and gives to thee all things, itself and thyself.

Another complaint, akin to the above, upon the decline of feeling with years, I gladly refute, as also every unnecessary fear of men, and if it can only be done, gladly I gain the sun side of all the moons of our life.

A narrow heart scarcely increases, but a wide heart grows still larger; the one contracts years, the other expands them. Man only errs twice over the warm depth of his feelings.

The first occasion is when they exist in all their strength, but at the same time in repose. Art thou deeply sensible for thy children in the actions of week-day-life, in cool composure while commanding them and perhaps reproving, and caring for them— and during the seperation all the day long, or in the comparison of one child with another; art thou deeply sensible of that glow of love for them, which from the scattered ashes of every day life, breaks forth in pure flames, immediately when thy child suffers innocently, or dies? Then indeed was thy love earlier than thy pain, and the pain of thy child. How does that heart appear in wedlock and in friendship, which in the accustomed close relations of life, beats and grows warm only secretly, in both the hours in which a person pleases me most, the hour of departure, and the hour of arrival, with all the radiant power of the long fostered flame, as the glacier-if such a poetical comparison be allowed-blazes transparently and rosy-red only at the rising and setting of the sun, but stands there gloomy and grey in the daylight.

Perhaps even the adversary of mankind, yes, the greatest selfishness unconsciously loves. Let one snatch himself away from the whole world of mankind, even from the smallest child, and then let him ask his heart: Does not rash coldness against one, against ten, against many, with stiffness towards all, continually change?

Therefore then a gold-mine of love lies almost invisible, until a little fluttering flame in the breast, until in fine a spirit-word arouses him and discloses for man the ancient treasures. Also, it really rejoices me that the heart, merely by the habit of community-it, which formerly all pleasures and charms disrobed, violated-in solitude gathers nourishment for love, as the diamond even under the water absorbs light to emit its beams again, and that love just at the time when hatred obscures it, having remained a long while chilled and devoid of lustre, all at once, when the danger of a seperation occurs, discloses its magnitude with all its brilliancy, for habit lays on the colors of love, as the fresco-painting its own, one after another becomes absorbed and vanishes, and an invisible one is again produced, until at last there arises up and is presented before us, a durable splendid form.

At another time man believes that he is chilled in his feeling by o'd age, because he can kindle a flame within him only for higher objects, as those, which warm him up sooner. But this is by no means true, which sometimes yet the friend of landscapes, the preacher, the poet, the play-actor, the musician, fears, that art and heart grow weak in their sensibility for nature as years advance, solely because in their old age they are more faintly affected by the objects which charmed them when they were young. It is true thou weepest now, as I, not so often as formerly in tragic scenes and under the spell of music; but give us a genuine poem, and give me a Vestal of Spontini represented in Mannheim, then will I commend myself, if I maintain even as much power over my emotions, as this over me. Youth is like dark wax that melts even before the sparing sunbeams, while the white made of it scarcely grows warm. The mature and super-mature man flees from the very tears the young man seeks; but only because they gush out too hotly from him and dry up too slowly.

Therefore, good Heaven! select a man of my age and my heart and my life-long poverty in sublime scenery, and lead him in the Rhine country, and bring him by the attractive long lake of the Rhine, which between two vineyards, as between blissful portions of the world, represents only country seats of pleasure, and islands formed within its embrace, and allows even the after-glow of evening red to bloom upon its surface: truly youth becomes mirrored again in the old man, and the still ocean of eternity, which allows us a glance in the right and great heaven on earth. Or when a kind fortune introduces a man of so many years, and of so little knowledge of art, as I have, and of the same character of thought, in the old German Picture Gallery of the brothers Boisseree, warm friends of art, and when he therein (although he has previously seen by way of initiation the Dying Marie of Van Eyk) meets before his eyes that master piece of his pupil, the head of Christ, and when he feels the necessity of looking closely into the superhumanity of the image, whose eyes are the judges of the world, and whose features have only an affinity with those of men, though not popular, yet super-human, and as he, immediately after the humiliation, before the god-like figure, has gained at last the consolation of entering into existence the second time in the form of man in artist-spirit, and looks into the deep love-fountains of the eyes and lips then know I, how a merely colored surface would make the heart of that fortunate man tremble and melt away, for I was such a fortunate man myself.

Memory, wit, fancy, sharp-sense cannot rejuvenate in an old man, but the heart has that faculty within itself; and that you may believe this truth, think thereon, how the hearts of poets glow even in their autumn and their winter. Think of Klopstock, Herder, Gleim, Wieland, Rousseau.

The name Rousseau calls to mind love in a narrower sense.

And this consoles and warms an old heart perhaps oftener than it expresses itself. The expression of love is also not always necessary for its existence. He who in old age misses love entirely, entertained not the right kind of love in youth, on which all years are alike, as in winter only the dried up branches, but not the juicy ones are overlaid with ice. Painfully the loving heart beats within the breast of that one, when he must think it beats against coldness, it remains only for the space of some ten years, and continues coldly dying during the long ten years. But love will often dissemble and modestly conceal a portion of its warmth from children and grand-children; and the last love is perhaps as modest as the first.

But shall love in old age, as soon as it answers no outward prerogative of youth, be always only ridiculous? Wherefore shall the life of love, which continues with the better men only spiritually, beginning with the inner man, not conclude also with the inner man? Is it then so very ridiculous, when an aged eye full of soul glances on thee, and permits thee to divine the memories of all its spring seasons? Yes, even if it become liquid, though not too tearful, with an emotion half joy, half after-feeling, may not this also be pardoned? And is then an aged hand not allowed to press the hand of a young person, when it intimates by the pressure no other signals than these: I also was in Arcadia, and Arcadia also remains in me? For the youth of the spirit is eternity, and eternity is youth; love affords as the ambrosia of ancient poetry, the sweetest fare and immortality at the same time. The body is the flowering-wand of love; but only the wand, not the living flower moulders away in the dust of earth.

When while the feelings of every age of life remain secure, even then all signs of the same retain not the self-same freedom, although I might say to each and every individual of the human. family: Spare every true love, by whatever tokens you may discern it, and deride the outbreak of a blissful heart not more rashly than you dare the grief of a mourner.

To a common person peculiarly, every sign of a love, of which he is only the spectator and not the object, appears ridiculous and faulty, even in the very flower of life; therefore he ascribes to himself a greater right to laugh coldly when out of the ordinary season he meets with the forget-me-not of love.

ART. V.

THE NEW-YEAR'S NIGHT OF AN UNFORTUNATE.

From the German of Jean Paul Richter.

An old man stood by a window on a New-Year at midnight, and looked with a glance of long desperation up towards the immovable, continually blooming heaven, and down on the still, pure, white earth, where now no one was so joyless and sleepless as he. For he stood near his tomb, which was decked only with the snow of old age, not by the green of youth, and he brought nothing along out of his whole rich life, nothing along, but errors, sins and sickness, a ravaged body, a desolated soul, the breast full of venom and an old age full of remorse.

The fine days of his youth were now changed into spectres, and allured him away again to the bright morning, where his father first placed him on the crossway of life; towards the right the sunny road of virtue leads up into a wide peaceful land, full of light and harvests and full of angels; the one towards the left leads down among the mole-hills of vice into a black hole full of dropping poison, full of aiming serpents and black sweltering va

pors."

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Ah! the serpents wound themselves around his breast, and the drops of poison hung upon his tongue, and he knew now, where he was."

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Madly and with unutterable grief he cried out to Heaven: Give me youth again! Oh Father, place me on the cross-way again, that I may choose the other road."

But his Father and his youth were gone far hence. He saw will-o'-the-wisps dancing over the moor and dying away in the church-yard, and he said: These are my foolish days! He saw a star shoot out from Heaven and glimmering in its fall, melt to nothing on the earth. That am I, said his bleeding heart, and the serpents of remorse buried their teeth deeper in its wounds."

"Flaming phantasy showed him crawling night-wanderers on the roofs, and the windmill raised its arms, groaning to break to pieces, and a corpse left remaining in an empty death-house gradually regained its lineaments."

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Suddenly in the midst of the spasm, the music for the New Year flowed down from the steeple, like church-melodies from afar. He was tenderly touched-he looked around on the horizon and over the wide world, and he thought on the friends of his youth, who now, happier and better than he, were teachers of the earth, fathers of happier children and blessed men, and he said: O, I also could slumber, with dry eyes this first night, like you, had I been willing. Ah, I could be happy, ye dear parents, had I complied with your New Year's wishes and warnings."

"In feverish memories on the time of his early youth, it ap