Book 2 — THE IDEAL.

GERMAN LITERATURE, AND A LOVE STORY.

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BY C. G. FOSTER.

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I perceive with regret that it has of late become fashionable among the critics and mediocre authors, on both sides of the water, to decry German literature. Having rifled the gems—and bright and precious are they—the casket is now to be kicked aside as useless lumber. Even Blackwood—so long an oracle almost of the literary world—even Kit North himself, than whom a better man or truer poet never existed—has turned cynic and snarler in his old age, and after having marched side by side with Scott, Göethe, Byron, Coleridge, Schiller, Schlegel, and Shelley, through the brightest era of literature that has dawned and blazed upon the world since Johnson, has at last sunk to the level of a literary parvenu, and laughs at German literature! He should not have done it! I tell you, Christopher, that the inspiration of a century was concentrated in a few mighty brains, which, within the last century, have returned to dust. For another hundred years to come, human intellect will seldom rise above the mere practical concerns of life—railroads, manufactures, and machinery. Practical science and natural philosophy will progress; but not that sublime and immediate gift of God, the embodying of the Ideal Perfect. The old world is exhausted. Greece, and her mouldering monuments of classic beauty—Rome, and her magnificent mementos of the shadowy past—Spain with her high romance, and Asia with her gorgeous grandeur—who will venture again to explore? Chateaubriand, Byron, De Stäel, Moore, Rogers—are not such names barriers to frighten all aspirants? No—not till America—the new world—becomes rich and settles herself down in quiet grandeur—not till her thousand mountains, her mighty lakes, her stupendous cataracts, and her boundless prairies, become invested with the magic of intellectual association—not until history begins to lose itself in dreamy and indistinct fable, to cast a vague interest over every charmed spot—will the bright-winged Ideal rouse from her sleeping nest. She shrinks from every thing practical, palpable, and common-place, as the rainbow loses its hues as it approaches the earth.

Let us then cherish and protect the thoughts and aspirations which these mighty minds have bequeathed us. Never did I think to find Wilson depreciating German literature. He is old, and should almost fear that posterity will retort upon him! A remnant of the old worshippers of the Ideal yet remain, haunting the ploughed fields of modern improvement, like the scattered and timid deer which are sometimes seen bounding along the margin of civilization. Like the White Lady of Avenel, they are year by year fading away—the golden zone which binds their misty drapery is becoming smaller and smaller—the clack of the useful mill, or the clashing of machinery, drowns their voices at their favorite fountains; and they are forced to shut up the beautiful visions which haunt their breasts, in the deep sources of emotion which glow and bubble in silence.

The source of our most exquisite happiness is the cause of our keenest sufferings. The constant and feverish search after perfection soon disgusts the seeker. Expecting every thing for which the heart panteth, we rush onward from disappointment to despair. Hope’s false mirror is reversed; and pleasure appears as much diminished as it was before enlarged.

He who is blest with an organization in which Ideality holds a conspicuous place, will be sure to form a complete system of metaphysics, graduated upon its impulses. If he be permitted to inhale the odor of the German Ideology, or of Platonism in its sublime beauty, he will thence be satisfied; and will yield up his own dreamings to the more powerful enchantments which the beautiful dead have thrown around him—for Ideality is the least conceited of the feelings. It is only proud of its capacity to enjoy.

It was my fortune to be born and educated on the banks of the Hudson, where the noble river makes a long sweep westward, affording now an excellent landing for steamboats; but which, when I first snuffed up the free mountain air, resounded to nought but the wild warbling of the merry birds, or the occasional halloo of the far-off husbandman, as he urged his reluctant plough through the rich soil. There is now a nail-factory on the very spot where I used to stand, watching the glorious sunrise as its golden light filtered through the trees which crowned the eastern hill, and lit up the joyous brook which danced at my feet—while I felt that the broad and whirling river at my back, was leaping and quivering in the gleam. Each tiny grot and harbor which my young imagination erst peopled with denizens from the land of dreams, now resounds to the uncouth “clink of hammers,” or the sacrilegious wheezing of a steam-engine! When I last visited my native village—’tis ten years ago—to seek once more the remembered haunts of childhood, I found a railroad dépôt on the very spot where the church in which I was christened once stood, and a cotton factory on my former bathing-ground by the margin of my dear old lake.

Vexed and disappointed, I flung myself along an old heap of logs which had escaped the demon of improvement, and were still in their old position, crumbling quietly and decently to dust. Here I lay until the sun clambered awkwardly down the western sky, and the shadows of evening came out from their hiding places to meet the bat and owl, and hold their nightly revels in the moonshine. Gradually I sunk into a new and pleasing state of existence. I had been reading “Undine,” a literary gem of so pure and perfect a form and structure, that the only wonder is how it should have been created by the mere spontaneous working of the imperfect human brain. It is now ten years since I read it—nor have I presumed to look into a modern “translation,” of which I have heard—and yet you shall see how well I remember it.

Undine is the favorite child of a water-goddess, and like all fairies with whom I was ever acquainted, holds her ethereal attributes only at the expense of her natural affections, and becomes mortal at the touch of man. Well—her mother being an exception of a fairy woman, has no small degree of curiosity in her composition, and places this darling daughter of hers under the protection of an old anchorite who lived in a beautiful green island, all alone, as he thought; but he was mistaken, as you shall see: for this very island was the most frequent haunt of the fairies, gnomes, salamanders, and other such grave and respectable people—a sort of coffee-house, in fact, where they met nightly to talk over the politics of Elfinland, criticise the Queen’s last head-dress, laugh at Puck’s latest epigram, toss off their bumper of “mountain dew,” and stagger soberly to bed under the violet.

And so, in this wild, fragrant solitude—unknown to vulgar eyes and therefore unsoiled and untrampled upon—grew up this flower in all the luxuriant beauty of mortality, softened and spiritualized by her yet immortal nature. And, as the grape is most luscious and tempting the very moment ere it is tainted by the sun’s unhallowed kisses, and drops, a disgusting thing, from the green and immortal vine, so she grew ripe with loveliness and so intense in beauty, that, Narcissus like, she fell enamored of her own sweet image, as it was reflected in the pure spring sacred to the innate Ideal which bubbled within her own bosom. The old hermit marked anxiously and tenderly the growth of his young charge: and when, in the evening time—when the rose’s bosom swelled and panted beneath the night wind’s passionate embrace—she came and kissed his brow and nestled her beautiful curly head in his bosom, the old man was wild with joy, and his heart beat again as it did in youth, like the sleeping tide awakened to convulsions by the gentle moon.

But anon a brave and beautiful knight—whose ancestral castle still frowns above the Rhine, parting reluctantly, like a decaying beauty, one by one, year after year, with its fair proportions—came dashing through the foam to our dainty islet. He had been hunting in the forest; and a terrible storm coming up—no doubt set on foot by the mischievous fairies, who, like all other supernatural beings, are accused of frequently overturning the economy of a whole world to advance some particular whim of their own—he rode wildly through the intricate labyrinths of the woods for some hours to no purpose, and at length gave up the reins to his noble steed, who bore him wherever he would: and, landing on our beautiful island, the knight saw the twinkle of the anchorite’s torch, which he had lighted to tell his rosary at the midnight hour. The stranger was kindly welcomed, and the hermit’s homely fare cheerfully set before him.

And now, out peeped Undine—the little rogue—from her fairy slumbers, with her night-dress scarce hanging about her beautiful shoulders, and her large eyes dazzling and sinking into shade like the opal. Such visions may have broken upon Guido’s dreams, ere yet his hand had been trained by art to grasp the impalpable lightning of his mind, and chain it to the canvas. In vain the old man pleaded and expostulated—nay once in an angry tone commanded her to go back instantly. I wish you could have seen her then. It was like the uncoiling of a beautiful snake, disturbed in its playfulness by the rash intruder’s foot. With eye-balls darting fire—throat swelling and falling with beautiful rage—and every movement indicating the contortions of a fiend, who had in vain endeavored to disguise himself in the robes of spiritual beauty—she rudely pushed the old man aside, sprung lightly into the room, and stood, in an attitude of wild and timid repose, directly in front of the stranger knight.

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