fers to his
Locality, during this same 'healing sleep'; that his Pilgrim-staff
lies cast aside here, on 'the high table-land'; and indeed that the
repose is already taking wholesome effect on him? If it were not that
the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we
could have expected! However, in Teufelsdroeckh, there is always the
strangest Dualism: light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on
in the fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint
whimpering of woe and wail. We transcribe the piece entire:

'Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing and
meditating; on the high table-land, in front of the Mountains; over
me, as roof, the azure Dome, and around me, for walls, four
azure-flowing curtains,--namely, of the Four azure winds, on whose
bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. And then to fancy the fair
Castles that stood sheltered in these Mountain hollows; with their
green flower-lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or
better still, the straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother
baking bread, with her children round her:--all hidden and
protectingly folded-up in the valley-folds; yet there and alive, as
sure as if I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns
and Villages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still
weather, were wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal
tongue; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by
repeated Smoke-clouds; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might
read the hour of the day. For it was the smoke of cookery, as kind
housewives at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their husbands'
kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the air, successively or
simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke
could say: Such and such a meal is getting ready here. Not
uninteresting! For you have the whole Borough, with all its
love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as
in miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.--If, in my wide
Wayfarings, I had learned to look into the business of the World in
its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general
propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom.

'Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger through
the Distance: round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the
eddying vapour gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down lik