the cross; and the
passion-flower grew up in the midst of the wild broom, the branches
of which, tied together, the Tshuvash considers, even at the present
day, as his tutelary spirit or Erich[15]. No struggle seems ever to
have taken place, to reconcile these contradictory elements; while the
more philosophical spirit of the Teutonic nations, and their genius
for meditation and reflection, could not be so easily satisfied. The
character of the Teutonic world of spirits is the reflex of this
struggle. The foggy veil which covers their forms, the mysterious
riddles in which their existence is wrapped, the anxious pensiveness
which forms a part of their character, all are the results of these
fruitless and mostly unconscious endeavours to amalgamate opposing
elements. We cannot approach the region of their mysterious existence
without an awful shuddering; while the few fairies, which Slavic
poetry and superstition present us, strike us by the distinctness and
freshness of their forms, and give us the unmingled impression either
of the ludicrous or of the wild and fantastic.

It remains to speak of the moral character of Slavic popular poetry.
If, in respect to its decency, we may judge from the printed
collections, we must be struck with the purity of manners among the
Slavic nations, and the unpollutedness of their imagination. Hacquet,
speaking of the Slovenzi or Vindes, the Slavic inhabitants of
Carniola, states, that the songs with which they accompany their
dances are often indecent[16]. But there is little dependence to be
placed on judgments of this description. Sometimes expressions and
ideas are rashly called indecent, which only differ from the
conventional forms of decency without really violating its laws.
Hacquet moreover only half understood those songs of the Slovenzi. We
will at least not condemn them without having seen them. Among the
Russian songs, there are some of a certain wanton and equivocal
character, displaying with perfect _naivete_ a scarcely half-veiled
sensuality. The boldness, with which these songs are sung in chorus by
young peasant women, has often excited the astonishment of foreigners.
The number of ballads of this description, however, so far as we are
informed, is not considerable; and the character of Russian
love-ballads in general is pure and chaste. As for the Servians, they
have in fact a great multitude of songs of a very marked levity and
frivolity; and Goethe, when these firs