exactly the most interesting, are composed throughout in Latin; and yet, perhaps, there is no one quite free from the occurrence, as it were by accident, of German phrases. It resembles the com- munication of an adventurer, far-travelled in foreign lands, who yet could never quite forget his mother-tongue, and now throws all together in confused variety, as it may chance to fall. Something of this sort, I have been told of a French sailor, and numberless times has the old Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus ab Hohen- heim (for thus stands his full title) reminded me of it. I, notwith- standing, ceased not to study an old edition of my speech-monger, which fell to me at an auction ; — and that carefuUy. Even his re- ceipts I read through in their order, just as they had been showered into the text, still continuing in the firm expectation, that from every line something wonderfully magical might float up to me and strike the understanding. Single sparks, here Eind there darting up, confirmed my hopes, and drew me still deeper into the mines beneath. Somewhat thereto might have been contributed by the symbolic figures, very skdfuUy impressed upon the leathern covers of the ten or twelve quarto volumes, as also by the, to me unin- telligible, gold letters here and there dispersed among them, and the wood-cut (inserted as a title-page) of the wonderful master, representing him in an antiquated jacket ; his features strongly marked, almost inclined to wrath, yet bearing a true-hearted mild- ness ; his head already grey and bald, but with one lock, almost Apollonian, over the forehead ; ooth his nerved hands folded to- gether and resting on a knight's two-hemded sword.
" Now, ancient master, thanks to thee, A valiant course thuu leddest me,"—
for, as a pearl of soft radiance, that may be compared to a mild tear of melancholy, there at last sparkled towards me, from out its rough-edged shell-work — " Undine !"
My reflection of the image succeeded all the better, and more naturally, as the hoary magician treated with the most unshaken conviction, one is almost induced to say faith, of the indisputable reality of his elemental spirits ; not only of the undines or un- denes, as he expresses it, but also of sylphs, or spirits of the air ; salamanders, or spirits of the fire ; gnomes, or spirits of the earth. Founded upon such ideas, the author, at a later period, called some other tales into light, and, as he may well say, not without suc- cess. But the words of his old master, A. W. Schlegel, spoken
