The Pictures; The Betrothing.

by Ludwig (Lewis) Tieck.

THE TRANSLATOR TO THE READER.

A tale ought never to stand in need of a preface or commentary. The best are those which are the most strictly national and in the highest sense of the word popular, which touch immediately the sympathies of the living generation, and display the common elements of our nature, the purely human, under the social relations most familiar to the author and the reader. For then essence and form are most intimately, because naturally and unconsciously blended; neither is exclusively studied, or sacrificed to the other. But even when it is the poet's endeavour, as it is often the highest exercise of his high vocation, to recall the image of the past with its individual peculiarities, to refresh the fading colours of an important, but half-forgotten period, to catch and raise the faint tones of an expiring tradition; when even his historical groundwork is fixed in a remote age and a foreign scene, still the tale ought to contain every thing necessary for it to be fully felt and understood within itself. It should not only be completely independent of any formal introduction or addition, but should even be able to dispense with the aid of those digressions and reflexions and elaborate descriptions, which are in fact only prefaces out of their place, or notes taken up into the text, and which sometimes disfigure even the best of our modern novels, and dispel the illusion created by the poet's genius, by taking us behind his magic lantern and shewing us the machinery of his art. This will apply in most cases to translations of such works. It may however sometimes happen, that a tale perfectly intelligible and luminous in the circle of readers for which it was designed may to a different public seem obscure, or give occasion for misapprehension. Such is most frequently the case with those which belong most exclusively to the age and country of the writer, when he does not merely aim at exhibiting human nature clothed in the existing forms of society, but takes for his immediate theme the spirit and tendency of the times in which he lives, the principles and opinions, the tastes and the pursuits of his generation. In works of this nature many things will be taken for granted, many slightly alluded to, with which a foreigner is imperfectly, if at all, acquainted; the whole representation may wear a partial aspect, which, though in the society where it originated it may be sure of finding sufficient correctives, may elsewhere perplex and mislead.

The two little works here presented to the public fall within this exception to the general remark, and the Translator felt that he should not be doing them full justice, if he were not to preface them with a few words of introduction. Their beauty it is true can hardly fail to strike even those who are least conversant with the state of things out of which they arose, and of which they exhibit several interesting sides, but still without some additional explanations every part might not be sufficiently clear to the English reader, and the whole might appear to him in a false light, and perhaps lose its highest interest and meaning.

Little more than half a century has pa.s.sed, since Germany began to rouse herself from the state of lethargy which followed the convulsive struggles produced by the Reformation. She awoke, and found herself shorn of her strength, greatness and glory. The empire, reduced to the shadow of an august name, was hastening toward its dissolution. All sentiments of an enlarged patriotism were absorbed in particular and provincial interests and prejudices. The very idea of national union seemed to be lost with the great national recollections. There was no feeling of pride in the past, no consciousness of a glorious inheritance to inspire hope and confidence in the future. The degenerate descendant walked among the mighty monuments of the power, the genius, the art and spirit of his ancestors, with stupid unconcern or contemptuous wonder. A German school of art, a German literature were things neither believed in nor desired; that they had ever existed was forgotten; the memorials of them were left to sleep among the neglected lumber of history. The attention and patronage of the great were engrossed by productions of foreign growth; above all the language, the literature and manners of France exercised a despotic sway over the higher and educated cla.s.ses. The peculiar virtues of the German character, the native strength of the German intellect, were slighted, concealed, and as far as possible suppressed, while the artificial graces of an exotic refinement were affectedly displayed, and became the only pa.s.s into good society. The well-bred mimics strutted in their borrowed plumes with all the vanity, though not quite all the ease of their originals, and prided themselves on their successful imitation, without perceiving how awkwardly the foreign frippery sat on them, and how their ungainly movements betrayed them at every step, and exposed them even to the polite ridicule of their masters. The principles and opinions which had long been prevalent in France, and now began to be loudly expressed and industriously disseminated every where, were very extensively diffused over Germany together with the literature by which they had been carried to their highest maturity and perfection. They were maintained speculatively and practically by some earnest and zealous advocates, and found a very strong predisposition in their favour among the persons and cla.s.ses who were most interested in opposing them, and who, having adopted and cherished and even ostentatiously displayed them as modish distinctions, afterwards, when the inconvenient consequences stared them in the face, began, with a dissimulation too gross and palpable to attain its object, publicly to discountenance and check them. In the meanwhile they exerted a powerful and pernicious influence on the great concerns of human life, morals, politics and religion. The reign of light, liberality and common sense was every where proclaimed; objects formerly deemed great, awful and holy, were brought down by ingenious accommodations to the level of ordinary capacities, and men were surprized to find how they had been abused by imposing names, when they saw what had once appeared to them too vast and mighty for the imagination to compa.s.s reduced to dimensions which they could so easily grasp. Hopes were entertained, that an enlightened system of education might destroy the germ of such mischief for the future, and that it might be possible, if not in all cases to eradicate inveterate prejudices, yet to prevent the seeds of them from lodging in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the young, by suppressing the first feelings of wonder, faith and love; and that the rising generation, trained in the principles of a calculating morality, a cosmopolitan independence and a reflecting religion, might be effectually secured from the influence of all the bugbears and charms that had ever awed or fascinated the world.

But notwithstanding this false and unnatural tendency of the public mind, the prospect, though here and there clouded and threatening, was not absolutely cheerless and unpromising. The heart of Germany was still sound and entire, and the foreign cultivation, in spite of the activity with which it was conducted, could not find a congenial soil.

Even when the moral and intellectual imbecility and dependence were at their height, the great ma.s.s of the people remained uncorrupted and unperverted. The soul of poetry and the life of religion had retreated from the crown and topmost branches toward the root of society, and there, while the sere and many-coloured leaves trembled on the boughs, preserved the hope of a coming spring. Among the middling and lower cla.s.ses, particularly in situations exempt from the contagion of courtly example, the faith, the traditions and the manners of former times flourished in happy obscurity, and in proportion as they were despised and rejected by the great and the refined were held dear by the common man, and kept his heart warm, his imagination fresh, and his life pure. Even about the middle of the last century the workings of a regenerating spirit began to appear. Some great writers then took the lead in German literature, who, though themselves not wholly free from the influence of the age, yet in various ways contributed to counteract its prevailing tendencies, and to rouse and direct the dormant strength of their countrymen. Some penetrated into the deepest mysteries of Grecian art, and inspired a new, enthusiastic feeling for the beauties of cla.s.sical antiquity. Some opened the treasures of many interesting but neglected fields of ancient and modern literature. Others exposed with irresistible subtilty and force of criticism, the spurious rules and blind imitations and hollow pomp of the French drama, so long an object of unsuspecting faith, and directed the public attention to the true cla.s.sical and romantic models. The language itself, which in the preceding period had lost much of its grace, raciness and vigour, and had become at once weak and unwieldy, was carefully cultivated, and gradually formed into a worthy organ of high conceptions and deep speculations. The next generation grew up under happier auspices.

Shakespeare began to be known, felt and enjoyed in Germany, and the young and rising spirits of the age turned from the effete and lifeless literature of France, to contemplate the eternal freshness of nature and her favorite child. The new school of poetry which they formed, and which recognized no other guide than genius, truth and feeling, was perhaps partial in its tendency and indefinite as to its objects; it produced among much that was great and beautiful some morbid extravagances and wild exaggerations; but viewed as a state of transition it was both salutary and promising; it counteracted other much more dangerous and mischievous innovations of the age; it preserved many n.o.ble minds from the contagion of cold and heartless theories, and contained within itself the fruitful elements of a still more fortunate period.

The great political events which marked the close of the century gave a new impulse to the mind of Germany. The principles and opinions which then manifested themselves with tremendous consistency in France had exerted a more or less noxious and disturbing force in the former country, but the violent crisis to which they led was there at least in the highest degree beneficial. It did not operate, as in some other countries, merely as a lesson of political experience, to regulate the external conduct of those who were interested in the maintenance of established inst.i.tutions without altering their principles, and thus to produce a show of union and stability while the discordant elements continued to ferment in secret. In Germany the principles and doctrines which had become triumphant in France were subjected to the most free and vigorous discussion. The German spirit of philosophical speculation had never sunk into the dogmatical materialism of the French school.

The monstrous caricatures exhibited by the understanding, when relying on its una.s.sisted powers it undertook to build the future on the destruction of the past, drew the attention of the deepest thinkers to the fundamental errours of the moral and political theory then for the first time brought into action. To avert its immediate practical consequences was left to the vigilance of the great and the steady attachments of the people. The more important intellectual struggle against the theory itself was carried on, in every direction and with every species of literary armour, by the most powerful minds which at this critical epoch were rising to maturity.

But the exertions of individuals, however highly gifted and even closely united, are never sufficient to effect any important and durable change in the temper of a nation. They are themselves borne along with the current of the age, and may see and announce, but cannot control its course. Even the most striking lessons of foreign experience are lost upon a people; it gains wisdom and strength only by its own sufferings and actions. The moral and political regeneration of Germany was to spring out of the lowest depth of national calamity and humiliation. Under the hardest pressure of a foreign tyranny, which had grown mighty by their errours and distractions, and which applied its whole power, directed by a systematic and relentless policy, to destroy all the remains of their strength, all the links of their union, all the memorials of their greatness, the name of their country became once more dear to the Germans. They began to look back with affectionate reverence to its remote antiquity, to the early promise of its infancy, to the feats of its sportive and vigorous youth; its history, const.i.tution and language were investigated with an ardent and indefatigable interest; the monuments and relics of its happier days were anxiously drawn out of the dust of oblivion; every fragment connecting the present with the past, which had escaped the general wreck, was attentively examined and carefully guarded. The masterpieces of native art once more received the tribute of admiration, which had been so long withheld from them and lavished upon foreign worthlessness; those which had been before known and unnoticed were more deeply studied and placed in new points of view; buried treasures were brought to light, and men began to perceive with surprize and joy the inexhaustible riches of the mine, the surface of which they had so long trodden without the hope of gaining from it more than a few sickly, exotic flowers. The national character and genius were contemplated in a spirit at once philosophical and patriotic; their peculiarities were observed and fostered; the popular feeling, which through all the variations of fashionable opinion had preserved its homely vigour and simple purity, was no longer disdained or suppressed; all its signs and forms, its dialects and expressions, as it broke forth from time to time in poetry and tradition, were watchfully treasured. The Germans became proud of their country and their ancestors.

But with this feeling of exultation were mingled others of shame and repentance and despondency. Deeds of their own, a redeeming struggle, a trial of patience, fidelity and courage were wanting, to efface the inglorious recollection of the immediate past, and to inspire confidence and hope for the future. The ordeal was vouchsafed them, and the exercise of heroic self-devotion, of all the pa.s.sive and all the active virtues, had reconciled Germany with herself, even before the arduous conflict had been crowned with its glorious success. When the intolerable yoke was at length broken, and the invaders were driven within their natural limits, the conquerors felt themselves worthy of their forefathers, and believed that all errours might be retrieved and all losses repaired. An unbounded prospect opened before the eye of patriotism; and the energy which had already accomplished so much, the goodwill which had submitted to such trying tests, seemed capable of realizing the most lofty projects. The awakened consciousness of the nation found worthy organs, who announced in strains of prophetic eloquence its wants, its wishes and its destination.

But the enthusiasm, which, while its immediate object was before it, burnt with so pure, steady and beautiful a flame, displayed itself, after the first great work of deliverance was effected, in a variety of forms, and in some which were ludicrous, disgusting and possibly dangerous. It began soon to excite the jealousy of the governments, which had cherished it, and owed to it their independence and even their existence. Perhaps this jealousy, not always reasonable in its grounds or judicious in its measures, may have contributed to occasion the extravagances in which it afterwards found new motives for precaution and restriction, by checking the active spirit which might have been usefully guided into proper channels, and thus forcing it to licentious and mischievous aberrations. The circ.u.mstances too which usually accompany all revolutions of public feeling, attended likewise on this. The spirit of the times always finds in different individuals various degrees of capacity for receiving and containing it. Those who are possessed by it instead of possessing it, are apt to attach great importance to outward badges and distinctions, to attribute to them a productive power, and to subst.i.tute them for that which can alone give them value as signs and indications of its existence. These externals, which satisfy the indolent and amuse the weak and superficial, become the ready instrument and mask of imposture. The strong and glowing language, which in such seasons of general excitement gushes in a living stream out of the inmost depth of really inspired bosoms, is echoed by the imbecile without meaning, and by the designing with selfish views. Thus things in themselves innocent and even commendable become first contemptible and then suspected; the most genuine expressions of the purest and warmest feeling are profaned and abused, till they sink into unmeaning or equivocal commonplace. All this happened in Germany. In the first effervescence of patriotic rapture several violent and premature innovations were introduced or attempted in things of no moment, except so far as they are the natural and unforced expression of the inward character which produces them and by them is brought to light. Efforts were made to return to the dress, language and manners of a former age, by those who did not reflect that, until the spirit of the past had penetrated the whole ma.s.s of society, it was neither practicable nor desirable that any great change should be wrought on its surface; that it was in vain to think of improving the physiognomy without altering the disposition. The consequence was, that this imitation instead of becoming a popular habit remained a fashion confined to a few, and exhibited a strange and ludicrous contrast with that which it was meant to supplant. The fifteenth and eighteenth centuries brought side by side only put each other out of countenance.

A similar superst.i.tion displayed itself in the cultivation of the arts, particularly that of painting. The great works of the native masters, in which Germany is so rich, were deservedly admired, but they were not always studied in the same spirit in which the great Italian artists of the fifteenth century profited by the works of their predecessors. The new German school, though it has to boast many productions of genius, too often betrays by manner, affectation and caricature, its dependent and arbitrary origin. Those who least understand their models cling to the surface with indiscriminate imitation, and copy and even exaggerate defects. Their extravagances seem to justify the aversion of those who are equally partial in an opposite direction, and widen the breach between the cla.s.sical and romantic schools. The conflict of opinions thus produced, intimately connected as it is with the other phenomena of the day, forms an important feature in the intellectual face of Germany, and the description of it has been woven by the author, with inimitable art and an irony that never relaxes its impartiality, into the texture of the first Novel.

One of the consequences of the vicissitudes and revolutions which Germany had undergone was the revival of religious feeling. In the last century, partly from internal causes, partly from the influence of foreign manners and opinions, it had every where begun to languish, and had been almost entirely banished from the higher and educated cla.s.ses.

But the disasters and reverses of so many eventful years had subdued the irreligious levity, so little congenial to the German character; the very excess of calamity which seemed to have extinguished hope, had awakened a faith which gained strength even from despair. The war too which rescued Europe from the last and most imminent danger of an universal monarchy, was in Germany essentially a religious war. It was neither the desire of revenge nor of glory, nor even of liberty itself as the ultimate end, which nourished the enthusiasm there excited; the feeling which animated all the leading spirits, and which operated instinctively on the least reflecting, was the conviction that they were engaged in the highest and holiest of causes; that the moral, as well as the political regeneration of Europe depended on the issue of that struggle. The deliverance itself was so greatly beyond hope, so rapid and complete, and attended by so many wonderful and striking circ.u.mstances, that it was hailed rather with grat.i.tude as an interposition of Heaven, than with triumph as a victory achieved by human strength. The newly kindled religious fervour broke forth in various directions, and produced some remarkable and interesting changes. Individuals who could not find satisfaction for their religious cravings in the communion to which they belonged sought it in another. Religious societies separated from each other by slight distinctions made approaches to a closer union; those divided by an insurmountable barrier cherished and maintained more warmly than ever their distinguishing peculiarities. A new life seemed to be infused into the old observances of Catholic devotion, and the spirit of Protestant piety strove to display itself in new forms. Religion became a great public and private concern; every question relating to it excited a lively interest; every method of diffusing it was deeply studied and sedulously practised.

This good however came not unalloyed. Those in whom the religious feeling was least genuine, those who had merely caught it by contagion from others, were, as usual, the most anxious to make it prominent and conspicuous. They thought they could not exhibit too striking a contrast to the sceptical indifference and irreligious frivolity of the former age in their language and deportment. Piety, which is of a retiring nature, seldom conscious of her own actions, and never wishing them to be observed, was forced against her will into all companies upon all occasions, was made to occupy the foremost place, to study att.i.tudes and gestures, to think aloud and deliver herself in set terms. A new kind of spiritual dialect came into fashion, and threatened to infect the whole tone of conversation and literature. It was not precisely the cant which with us is the property and badge of certain religious sects, and which to unaccustomed ears is either ludicrous or disgusting; it was a more refined compound of mysticism and sentiment, rather cloying from excess of sweet, but not without a charm for the young and inexperienced, and very easy to be caught by habit or learnt from design. In the endeavour to exclude from society all symptoms and tokens of the freethinking age, the moral taste grew alarmingly squeamish, and began to reject the most wholesome food as savouring of profaneness. As the freedom of Shakespeare scandalizes our sectaries, so among the circles, in which religion was most the mode in Germany, the unconstrained and unaffected purity of Gothe began to pa.s.s for licentiousness.

We are indeed ourselves very far gone in this distemper, and value ourselves on our superior delicacy, because we cannot see without a blush what in times less refined was not supposed to need a veil, as none suspected it could ever raise an impure thought.

Another mischief not less formidable sprang from the same cause. It is the tendency of all enthusiasm to concentrate all the powers and feelings of the soul in its single object. Religious enthusiasm, the most intense as its object is the highest, is of all the most jealous and exclusive, and can least bear any partic.i.p.ation in its sovereignty over the thoughts and affections. Hence wherever it has been strongly excited, whatever bears the name or is allied to the nature of amus.e.m.e.nt and diversion has been proscribed, not so much on an ascetic principle of mortification, as sensual indulgence, but because it is thought to distract the attention from the great business of life. We are still suffering under a like effect of the puritanical spirit, the traces of which will perhaps never be effaced from our national character. Under its dominion the lower orders were deprived of their innocent and invigorating sports, and forced to supply their place by noxious stimulants, drawn first from the conventicle and afterwards from the alehouse. The pleasures of the higher cla.s.ses are of a more intellectual kind; their most refined entertainments are derived from the fine arts and elegant literature. But when the productions of literature and art are considered as diversions, they are levelled before the eye of religion with the sports of the vulgar; they are perhaps less harmless, as they cost much more time and ingenuity in the production, and exercise a more powerful influence over the mind.

From this point of view there is no essential difference between a puppet-show and a play of Shakespeare; only the one is a pastime for children, the other for men; a panorama is a source of amus.e.m.e.nt differing in degree only, not in kind, from a cartoon of Raphael; the former has the advantage of affording more general entertainment. A map or sea-chart are greatly superior to either, for they contribute to the practical purposes of life. But when religious feeling is very strongly excited and imperfectly regulated, art, literature and science, stand all alike in contrast with the realities of religion; and as empty fictions, worldly shows and illusions sink equally into nothing. Few men rise above this point of view. To perceive the real dignity of the arts and their intimate connexion with what is highest in human nature, with religion itself, requires both a vivid sense of beauty and a reach of speculation very rare and difficult to attain. In England the former is perhaps more common than the latter; the arts are seldom estimated at their real worth. Those who pursue amus.e.m.e.nt as the business of life, value them as they minister to that end; those whose thoughts are engrossed by religion, reject them altogether as toys and vanities; many think it allowable to indulge in them, provided it be coolly and soberly, as innocent diversions; a more numerous party, which thinks itself by far the wisest, would reconcile the two extremes, and enn.o.ble these recreations by making them vehicles for piety and morality.

A similar feeling of hostility and contempt towards the arts, not indeed so extensively diffused as under the reign of our Puritans, but still sufficiently marked and striking, accompanied the revival of the religious spirit in Germany. In some instances it was produced by an intensity of zeal; in the greater number it proceeded from coldness of imagination and incapacity for philosophical reflexion. It may perhaps have been strengthened by a cause peculiar to that country. Every one at all conversant with the modern German literature has been struck by the frequent recurrence of that which, till a better term shall be coined for it, may be called the esthetical view of things. It is that view which regards them not as true or false, nor as good or bad, but merely with reference to art as possessing or wanting beauty. This view, the prevalence of which has been referred by Frederic Schlegel to the influence of Winkelmann over his countrymen, is on some subjects peculiar to German writers. It has been frequently applied by them, with the happiest result, as a corrective to the partiality of the moral and historical views, which, exclusively pursued, must often lead into the grossest errours. But perhaps it has itself sometimes been allowed to predominate, and been carried with an intemperate license into subjects connected with religion. Even where this was not the case its introduction may have alarmed honest prejudices, and seemed to endanger the simplicity of faith and the fervour of devotion. At all events this is one of the causes which has there contributed to widen the unfortunate breach between religion and the arts.

To expose these and the various other false tendencies, perversions and exaggerations of religious feeling in Germany, for all of which, when a slight allowance is made for the difference of national manners and characters, the reader will be at no loss to discover parallels at home, is the Author's design in the second of these Novels. No man was better qualified for this undertaking than one who, living almost wholly in a poetical world, has never ceased to keep a watchful eye on the fluctuations of opinion and feeling among his contemporaries. To him too it peculiarly belonged to apply a corrective to the now prevailing extravagances, who formerly attacked, with satire the most powerful perhaps to be found in modern literature, errours and follies of an opposite description, and contributed, at least as efficaciously as any writer in Germany, to produce the moral revolution, of which this volume exhibits the dark side. It is this that gives a peculiar charm to the homage which he incidentally pays to Gothe, a charm indeed inevitably lost on the English reader; but to one who has marked the progress of these two great poets, their singular diversity of genius and the seeming divergency of their course, this tribute of veneration under such circ.u.mstances has in it something beautiful and almost affecting. The pa.s.sage in other respects is unhappily as intelligible to the English reader as any in the volume; here too Gothe had scarcely acquired a partial celebrity before he was attacked on similar grounds, with perhaps as much sincerity and certainly not less scurrility. In the execution of his delicate task, the Author has displayed the temper and spirit befitting a theme, the treatment of which, without the nicest impartiality, might be mischievous or offensive. In the midst of the keenest ridicule and the warmest glow of feeling he preserves an ironical self-possession, such as only a consummate artist can command.

The keeping is every where perfect; the living scene is presented to us rather in a mirror than a picture.

Though these two little works, especially the latter, are occasional and even polemical in their origin, they have a value quite independent of the temporary effect they may produce, not only as possessing a sort of historical interest from the view they afford of a remarkable period, but as nearly perfect models of composition in their kind. It is one of which we can hardly be said to have a specimen in our literature. We have indeed two or three names for prose works of fiction, but the chief difference between them is one of quant.i.ty. The novel is only a longer tale, or the tale a shorter novel. Even in Spanish or Italian literature it would not be easy to find an exact parallel; for the _novelas_ and _novelle_ are in general only circ.u.mstantial anecdotes. The name however adopted from them by Tieck has been retained, though as applied to a work of less than three volumes it has now become obsolete. The peculiarity of these Novels is the dramatic concentration, the compression of all the elements which compose them within the smallest possible compa.s.s, within which they can fully expand and display themselves. It is the most common fault even of the ablest writers to exceed or fall short of that compa.s.s, and both faults are often committed in the same work; some of the component parts are left undeveloped, others dilated to an arbitrary extent. The exact medium is the highest mystery, and its attainment the greatest triumph of art. It is this which, among the many admirable things in the present volume, is perhaps most worthy of admiration. The variety and originality of the characters here introduced would under any circ.u.mstances be remarkable, but it excites peculiar surprize and delight, that in so small a s.p.a.ce they find room to act so freely and to shew themselves so fully. There are enough of them to furnish richly as many novels of the modern size, yet, had the Author indulged his fancy in multiplying situations and weaving new intrigues for never so many volumes, they could not have stood before us more clearly and distinctly, with more of life and nature. They have been scarcely an hour in our company before they become old acquaintance; we should know no more of them if we were to hear the whole history of their lives.

But to point out the Author's merits was not the object of this Preface, which has already grown to what may appear an inordinate length. The Translator wishes he could have believed it altogether superfluous, and will not add to it anything which he knows to be so.

Indeed he thinks himself fortunate in not being obliged to vindicate the morality of these Novels. For with us this is esteemed, not only by most well-disposed readers, but by almost all our periodical critics great and small, a very essential point in a work of fiction, and it is therefore usual for a novel-writer, who wishes to secure their approbation, to indicate, either in the t.i.tle or at the conclusion, the branch of morality to which his work is to be referred. But the best German writers have some strange notions on this subject; they believe that a tale may have a high value, though its moral essence cannot be extracted in a precept or an aphorism; they even think it the better for having no didactic object, and Gothe goes the length of saying that a good tale can have none. Such being the case, it would not have been surprizing if in these Novels the moral lesson had been somewhat obscure, and had required some ingenuity to deduce. The Translator then has reason to congratulate himself, that it is as obvious and striking as if the Author's main end had been to convey it, and that he has even been spared the trouble of construing it. He will therefore no longer detain the reader from better company.

THE PICTURES.

"Have the goodness, Sir, in the meantime to step into the picture gallery," said the servant as he let young Edward in; "my master will come to you directly."

With a heavy heart the young man entered.

"With what different feelings," thought he to himself, "did I once pace through this room with my worthy father! It is the first instance of my descending to such a step as this, and it must be the last too. That it really must! And it is time for me to take a different view of myself and the world."

Setting down a covered picture against the wall he advanced farther into the room. "How a man can have patience with these lifeless pictures, and exist in and for them alone!" so he continued his silent meditations. "Does not it seem as if these enthusiasts lose themselves in a realm of enchantment? For them art is the only window through which they catch a glimpse of nature and the world; they have no means of knowing either except as far as they compare them with their copies.

And yet so it was that my father too dreamt his years away; whatever was foreign to his collection gave him no more concern than if it had fallen out at the pole. Strange how enthusiasm of every kind tends to confine our existence and all our feelings!"

At the moment he raised his eye, and was almost dazzled or startled by a picture that hung in the upper region of the lofty saloon without the ornament of a frame. A girl's head with delicately tangled flaxen locks and a playful smile was peeping down, in a light undress, one shoulder partly bare, which looked full and glossy; in her long tapering fingers she held a fresh-blown rose close to her ruddy lips. "Now really,"

cried Edward aloud, "if this is a picture of Rubens, as it must be, that glorious man surpa.s.sed all other masters in such subjects! That lives! That breathes! How the fresh rose blooms against the still fresher lips! How softly and delicately do the hues of both play into one another, and yet so distinctly parted! And that polish of the rounded shoulder, the flaxen hair scattered over it in disorder! How is it possible that old Walther can hang his best piece so high up and without a frame, when all the other trash glitters in the most costly decorations?"

He raised his eye again, and began to comprehend what a mighty art is painting, for the picture grew more and more instinct with life. "No, those eyes!" he said again to himself, entirely lost in gazing; "how could pencil and colour produce any thing like that? Does not one see the bosom pant, the fingers and the round arm in motion?"

And so it was indeed: for at the instant the lovely form raised itself, and with an expression of roguish playfulness flung down the rose, which flew against the young man's face, then drew back and shut the little window, which rung as it closed.

Startled and ashamed, Edward picked up the rose. He now clearly remembered the narrow pa.s.sage above, which ran parallel to the saloon, and led to the upper rooms of the house: the other little windows were hung with pictures; this only had, to gain light, been left as it was, and the master of the house used often from this spot to survey the strangers who visited his gallery. "Is it possible," said Edward, after he had called to mind all these circ.u.mstances, "that little Sophia can in a s.p.a.ce of four years have grown such a beauty?" Unconsciously and in strange distraction he pressed the rose to his lips, then leaned against the wall, his eyes fixed on the ground, and did not observe for some seconds that old Walther was standing by his side, till the latter, with a friendly slap on the shoulder, roused him from his reverie. "Where were you, young man?" said he joking; "you look as if you had seen a vision."

"So I feel," said Edward; "excuse me for troubling you with a visit."

"We ought not to be such strangers, my young friend," said the old man heartily; "it is now upwards of four years since you have entered my house. Is it right that your father's friend, your former guardian, who certainly always meant well by you, though we had at that time some differences, should be so totally forgotten?"

Edward blushed, and did not immediately know what to answer. "I did not suppose that you would miss me," he stammered out at last, "much--every thing might have been otherwise; but the errors of youth----"

"Let us drop that subject," cried the old man gaily; "what prevents us from renewing our former acquaintance and friendship? What brings you to me now?"

Edward looked downwards, then cast a hasty transient glance at his old friend, still hesitated, and at last went with lingering step to the pillar where the picture was standing, and took it out of its cover.

"See here," said he, "what I have found unexpectedly among the property left me by my father; a picture that was kept in a book-case which I had not opened for years. Judges tell me it is an excellent Salvator Rosa."

"So it is!" exclaimed old Walther, with enthusiasm in his looks. "Ay, that is a glorious prize! A happy chance to light upon it so unexpectedly. Yes, my dear departed friend had treasures in his house, and did not know himself all he was master of."

He set the picture in the right light, examined it with beaming eyes, went closer, then back again, pursued the outlines of the figures from a distance with the finger of a connoisseur, and then said, "Will you part with it? Name your price, and if it be not too high the picture is mine."

In the meanwhile a stranger came up, who had been taking a drawing after a Julio Romano in another quarter of the gallery. "A Salvator?"

he asked with a somewhat sarcastic tone, "which you have really found among the heir-looms of an inheritance?"

"Certainly," said Edward, cavalierly surveying the stranger, whose plain frock and simple air gave him about the appearance of a travelling artist.

"You have then been yourself imposed on," answered the stranger in a haughty rough tone, "if it be not your intention to impose on others; for this picture is evidently a pretty modern one, perhaps is quite new; at all events not above ten years old; an imitation of the master's manner good enough to deceive for a moment, but which on closer inspection soon betrays its baldness to a connoisseur."

"I cannot help feeling surprised at this presumption!" exclaimed Edward, entirely losing his self-command. "In the collection my father left behind him were none but good and original pictures; for he and Mr. Walther always pa.s.sed for the best judges in the town. And what would you have? In the shop of our celebrated picture-dealer Erich there hangs the pendant to this Salvator, for which a traveller a few days ago offered a very large sum. Let them be compared together, and it will be seen that they are works of the same master, and fellows."

"So!" said the stranger with a drawling tone, "you know then or are acquainted with that Salvator too? It is to be sure by the same hand as this, that admits of no doubt. In this town originals by that master are scarce, and Messrs. Erich and Walther do not possess one; but I am familiar with the pencil of that great master, and give you my word that he never touched these pictures, but that they are productions of a modern who wants to impose upon amateurs by them."