he moonlight like the pillars of a vast and ghostly temple;
the fall of cataracts down awful rocks; the wind wailing in wondrous
language or whistling Indian melody all night on heath, rocks, and hills,
over ancient graves and through lonely caves, bearing with it the hoot of
the night-owl; while over all the stars look down in eternal mystery,
like eyes reading the great riddle of the night which thou knowest
not,--this is to thee like Ariel's song. To me and to us there are men
and women who are in life as the wild river and the night-owl, as the
blasted tree and the wind over ancient graves. No man is educated until
he has arrived at that state of thought when a picture is quite the same
as a book, an old gray-beard jug as a manuscript, men, women, and
children as libraries. It was but yester morn that I read a cuneiform
inscription printed by doves' feet in the snow, finding a meaning where
in by-gone years I should have seen only a quaint resemblance. For in
this by the _ornithomanteia_ known of old to the Chaldean sages I saw
that it was neither from arrow-heads or wedges which gave the letters to
the old Assyrians. When thou art at this point, then Nature is equal in
all her types, and the city, as the forest, full of endless beauty and
piquancy,--_in saecula saeculorum_.

I had written the foregoing, and had enveloped and directed it to be
mailed, when I met in a lady-book entitled "Magyarland" with the
following passages:--

"The gypsy girl in this family was a pretty young woman, with masses
of raven hair and a clear skin, but, notwithstanding her neat dress
and civilized surroundings, we recognized her immediately. It is, in
truth, not until one sees the Romany translated to an entirely new
form of existence, and under circumstances inconsistent with their
ordinary lives, that one realizes how completely different they are
from the rest of mankind in form and feature. Instead of disguising,
the garb of civilization only enhances the type, and renders it the
more apparent. No matter what dress they may assume, no matter what
may be their calling, no matter whether they are dwellers in tents or
houses, it is impossible for gypsies to disguise their origin. Taken
from their customary surroundings, they become at once an anomaly and
an anachronism, and present such an instance of the absurdity of
attempting to invert the order of nature that we feel