withholding them. But chiefly,
perhaps, from ill-judged, dealing with this vague desire, was it
frequently betrayed in enthusiastic words, in a sort of unaccountable,
ecstasy in trances, which some reckoned prophetic. Instead of the
life-like, careless, childish games, and little quaint devices, which
formerly enlivened the house or open air, they gathered together praying,
as if for the fulfilment of an unspeakable distantlonging; they went up
the street, or across the fields, singing devout hymns. One or another at
home would stand up by the table, unabashed by the presence of elder
people, and speak from the seeming influence of some internal
communication, mystical, half-articulate words, and piously-sounding
reproofs or exhortations. It was in vain to chide or chastise them;
trustful obedience, humility, content with home, simple duties, cheerful
playfulness, were during this interval gone. Parents expected every day to
see the childish train assemble and depart from the village on some
rapture-wandering; and they were careful every night to lock the doors,
and see their family in bed.

None had watched throughout the course of this remarkable visitation, more
unaffected by its power than the steadfast, intelligent old Wendel,
schoolmaster of Groenstetten; but, especially, he observed its effect upon
his own peculiar charge with no small measure of careful anxiety. One fine
afternoon, towards the end of school-time, he dismissed the children from
their tasks, and gathering them around his seat near the open casements,
intimated his intention of relating to them a story from true history, as
was occasionally his custom. The old dame his wife, and his daughter, were
seated behind him with their work; and the venerable gray-haired man
looked cheerfully on the crowd of sober young faces in front, as if he
would have diffused somewhat of the spirit of childhood again from his own
experience into their innocence. A book from which he had been reading at
mid-day lay upon his little desk. Far beyond, out in the upper air shown
through the window, a golden sunlight came over the cool green woods, and
fell upon the gray towers of the old ruined castle of Groenstetten.

"Children," said he, "yonder old castle takes us back in thought to the
time of which I would speak. You must know, that in the old time things
were very different from what they are now, although the same green earth
and blue air enclosed between them men an