tale _did_ appear in the Berlin Almanack of 1820,
with additional localities, and names of celebrities in the Art-World,
but the publishers told him he ought to try to keep within the bounds
of 'probability,' in future."--(Note of Editor of Collected Works.)]

"However, all the same, my dear friends, did you not laugh heartily
enough at times, as I was reading it? and ought that not to deprive
your criticism of some of its severity? If you, Ottmar, say my tale is
a mosaic, you might admit that it has something of a Kaleidoscope
character, in spite of its crackiness, and that its matters, though
most adventitiously shaken together, do ultimately form more or less
interesting combinations. At all events, you surely admit that there
are one or two good characters in my story, and at the head of them,
the love-stricken Baron Benjie, that worthy scion of the Jew-coiner
race of Lippolts; however, we've had far too much of my piece of
patchwork, which was only intended to amuse you for a moment as a
_bizarre_ jest. What I would have you notice is that I have been
faithful to my principle of welding on the Legendary to the every-day
life of the present day."

"And," said Theodore, "I am a great adherent of that principle. It used
to be supposed to be necessary to localize everything of the legendary
kind in the remote East, taking Scheherezade as the model in so doing;
and, as soon as we touched upon the manners, the customs, the ways of
life of the East, we got into a world which was apparently hovering,
adrift, all in a sort of unreality, anchorless, before our eyes, on the
point of floating away and disappearing. This is why those tales so
often strike coldly on us, and have no power to kindle the inner
spirit--the fancy. What I think, and mean, is, that the foot of the
heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the
higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that
everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then
find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvellous,
magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their
ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most
glorious part thereof. For them it is the beautiful flower-garden
beyond the city-wall into which they can go, and in which they can
wander and enjoy themselves, if they have but made up their minds to
quit the gloomy walls of the city, for a time."

"Don