, it lay buried.

The force of his strong nature, his enthusiasm, and a kind of savage
energy he possessed, frequently overbalanced his reason, and he gave
way to wild rantings and ravings, which often followed on the longest
efforts of his mental labour, and seemed like the outpourings of an
overcharged intellect. The zeal with which he prosecuted his great task,
was something almost miraculous--often for thirty, or even forty, hours,
did he remain at the desk without food or rest, and then such was his
exhaustion, bodily as well as mental, that he would fall senseless on
the floor, and it required all the exertions of those about him to rally
him from these attacks. His first sensations on recovering, were ever
those of a deadly struggle with the evil one, by whose agency alone
he believed his great work was interrupted, ana then the scene which
succeeded would display all the fearful workings of his diseased
imagination. From these paroxysms, nothing seemed to awake him so
readily, as the presence of his friend Melancthon, whose mild nature
and angelic temperament were the exact opposites of his bold, impetuous
character. The sound of his voice alone would frequently calm him in his
wildest moments, and when the torrent of his thought ran onward with mad
speed, and shapes and images flitted before his disordered brain, and
earthly combats were mingled in his mind with more dreadful conflicts,
and that he burst forth into the violent excesses of his passion--then,
the soft breathings of Melancthon's flute, would still the storm, and
lay the troubled waters of his soul--that rugged nature would yield even
to tears, and like a child, he would weep till slumber closed his eyes.

I lingered the entire day in the Wartburg--sometimes in the Rittersaal,
where suits of ancient and most curious armour are preserved; sometimes
in the chapel, where the rude desk is shown at which Luther lectured to
the household of the "Schloss." Here, too, is a portrait of him, which
is alleged to be authentic. The features are such as we see in all
his pictures; the only difference I could perceive, was, that he is
represented with a moustache, which gives, what a Frenchman near me
called an "air brigand" to the stern massiveness of his features. This
circumstance, slight as it is, rather corroborates the authenticity
of the painting, for it is well known that during his residence at the
Wartburg, he wore his beard in this fashion, and to many