ttle
Dwelling place of men, in itself a congeries of houses and huts,
become for us an individual, almost a person. But what thousand other
thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena
of joyous or mournful experiences; if perhaps the cradle we were
rocked in still stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell there, if
our Buried ones there slumber!' Does Teufelsdroeckh, as the wounded
eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military
deserters, and all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in
the direction of their birthland,--fly first, in this extremity,
towards his native Entepfuhl; but reflecting that there no help awaits
him, take but one wistful look from the distance, and then wend
elsewhither?

Little happier seems to be his next flight: into the wilds of Nature;
as if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. So at least we
incline to interpret the following Notice, separated from the former
by some considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing noteworthy:

'Mountains were not new to him; but rarely are Mountains seen in such
combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks are of that sort called
Primitive by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in
masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, is
here tempered by a singular airiness of form, and softness of
environment: in a climate favourable to vegetation, the gray cliff,
itself covered with lichens, shoots-up through a garment of foliage or
verdure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round the
everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, Beauty alternates with
Grandeur: you ride through stony hollows, along straight passes,
traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock; now winding
amid broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly emerging
into some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a
Lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if
Peace had established herself in the bosom of Strength.

'To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the Son of Time
not pretend: still less if some Spectre haunt him from the Past; and
the future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, spectre-bearing. Reasonably
might the Wanderer exclaim to himself: Are not the gates of this
world's happiness inexorably shut against thee; hast thou a hope that
is not mad? Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the
original Greek