read one or two of Shakespeare's plays till their
effect on him became so strong that he could go no further. His whole
soul was in commotion. He sought an opportunity to speak with Jarno;
to whom, on meeting with him, he exprest his boundless gratitude for
such delicious entertainment.

"I clearly enough foresaw," said Jarno, "that you would not remain
insensible to the charms of the most extraordinary and most admirable
of all writers."

"Yes!" exclaimed our friend: "I can not recollect that any book, any
man, any incident of my life, has produced such important effects on
me as the precious works to which by your kindness I have been
directed. They seem as if they were performances of some celestial
genius descending among men, to make them by the mildest instructions
acquainted with themselves. They are no fictions! You would think,
while reading them, you stood before the enclosed awful Books of Fate,
while the whirlwind of most impassioned life was howling through the
leaves, and tossing them fiercely to and fro. The strength and
tenderness, the power and peacefulness of this man have so astonished
and transported me that I long vehemently for the time when I shall
have it in my power to read further."

"Bravo!" said Jarno, holding out his hand, and squeezing our friend's.
"This is as it should be! And the consequences which I hope for will
likewise surely follow."

"I wish," said Wilhelm, "I could but disclose to you all that is going
on within me even now. All the anticipations I have ever had regarding
man and his destiny, which have accompanied me from youth upward often
unobserved by myself, I find developed and fulfilled in Shakespeare's
writings. It seems as if he cleared up every one of our enigmas to us,
tho we can not say, Here or there is the word of solution. His men
appear like natural men, and yet they are not. These, the most
mysterious and complex productions of creation, here act before us as
if they were watches, whose dial-plates and cases were of crystal,
which pointed out according to their use their course of the hours and
minutes; while at the same time you could discern the combination of
wheels and springs that turn them. The few glances I have cast over
Shakespeare's world incite me, more than anything beside, to quicken
my footsteps forward into the actual world, to mingle in the flood of
destinies that is suspended over it; and at length, if I shall
prosper, to draw a few cups from