hed with the gentle Meister; he pondered deeply over the
congenial Schiller, but delighted most of all in Jean Paul the Only, in
whose prodigal fancy he lost for a time the memory of his sorrows. But
ever at his side, as he walked on the banks of the beautiful Neckar and
gazed up at the lofty mountains which surround Heidelberg, there seemed
to walk the Being Beauteous who had whispered with her dying breath, "I
will be with you and watch over you." Many years afterwards he embalmed
the memory of this young and beautiful wife in the poem called "The
Footsteps of Angels." The summer following his bereavement he started on
a tour through Switzerland, finding at the very outset of that journey
the tablet containing the inscription which he made the motto of
"Hyperion" and of his future life: "Look not mournfully into the Past,
it comes not back again; wisely improve the Present, it is thine; go
forth to meet the shadowy Future without fear and with a manly heart."
At Interlachen he met Miss Frances Appleton, and in the pages of
"Hyperion" the world has read of the romance which followed that
meeting. We also read, in the journals published recently, some records
of those days. Here is one of the earliest:--

"A day of true and quiet enjoyment, travelling from Thun to
Entelbuch on our way to Lucerne. The time glided too swiftly away.
We read the 'Genevieve' of Coleridge, and the 'Christabel,' and
many scraps of song, and little German ballads of Uhland, simple
and strange. At noon we stopped at Langnau, and walked into the
fields, and sat down by a stream of pure water that turned a mill;
and a little girl came out of the mill and brought us cherries; and
the shadow of the trees was pleasant, and my soul was filled with
peace and gladness."

And a little later:--

"Took a carriage to St. Germain-en-Laye to see the _Fete des
Layes_. The day was pleasant, with shifting clouds and sunshine.
They told me I was in good spirits. It was the surface only,
stirred by the passing breeze and catching the sunshine of the
moment. I have often observed, amid a chorus of a hundred voices
and the sound of a hundred instruments, amid all this whirlwind of
the vexed air, that I could distinguish the melancholy vibration of
a single string touched by a finger. It had a mournful, sobbing
sound. Thus amid the splendor of a festival,--the rushing crowd,