t mirth, not to be growled at or despised, in
Ages running to the shallow, which have lost their mirth, and become all
one snigger of mock-mirth. For it is observable, the more solemn is your
background of DARK, the brighter is the play of all human genialities
and coruscations on it,--of genial mirth especially, in the hour for
mirth. Who the DOCTOR BORDEL of Schilda was, I do not know: but they
have had their Bordel, as Gotham had;--probably various Bordels;
industrious to pick up those Spiritual fruits of the earth. For the
records are still abundant and current; fully more alive than those of
Gotham here are.--And yonder, then, is actually Schilda of the absurd
fame. A small, cheerful-looking human Village, in its Island among the
Woods; you see it lying to the right:--a clean brick-slate
congeries, with faint smoke-canopy hanging over it, indicating frugal
dinner-kettles on the simmer;--and you remember kindly those good old
grinnings, over good SCHILTBURGER, good WISE MEN OF GOTHAM, and
their learned Chroniclers, and unlearned Peasant Producers, who have
contributed a wrinkle of human Fun to the earnest face of Life.

"After Schilda, and before, you traverse long tracts of Pine Forest, all
under forest management; with long straight stretches of sandy road (one
of which is your own), straight like red tape-strings, intersecting the
wide solitudes: dangerous to your topographies,--for the finger-posts
are not always there, and human advice you can get none. Nothing but the
stripe of blue sky overhead, and the brown one of tape (or sand) under
your feet: the trees poor and mean for most part, but so innumerable,
and all so silent, watching you all like mute witnesses, mutely
whispering together; no voice but their combined whisper or big forest
SOUGH audible to you in the world:--on the whole, your solitary ride
there proves, unexpectedly, a singular deliverance from the mad railway,
and its iron bedlamisms and shrieking discords and precipitances; and
is soothing, and pensively welcome, though sad enough, and in outward
features ugly enough. No wild boars are now in these woods, no chance of
a wolf:"--what concerns us more is, that Friedrich's columns, on the 3d
of November, had to march up through these long lanes, or tape-stripes
of the Torgau Forest; and that one important column, one or more,
took the wrong turn at some point, and was dangerously wanting at the
expected moment!--

"Torgau itself stands near El