he sky can shine with its
sun and stars, inhabit a region of light and beauty; lofty coral-trees
glow with blue and crimson fruits in their gardens; they walk over the
pure sand of the sea, among exquisitely variegated shells, and amid
whatever of beauty the old world possessed, such as the present is no
more worthy to enjoy--creations which the floods covered with their
secret veils of silver; and now these noble monuments sparkle below,
stately and solemn, and bedewed by the water, which loves them, and
calls forth from their crevices delicate moss-flowers and enwreathing
tufts of sedge.

"Now the nation that dwell there are very fair and lovely to behold,
for the most part more beautiful than human beings. Many a fisherman has
been so fortunate as to catch a view of a delicate maiden of the waters,
while she was floating and singing upon the deep. He would then spread
far the fame of her beauty; and to such wonderful females men are wont
to give the name of Undines. But what need of saying more?--You, my dear
husband, now actually behold an Undine before you."

The knight would have persuaded himself that his lovely wife was under
the influence of one of her odd whims, and that she was only amusing
herself and him with her extravagant inventions. He wished it might be
so. But with whatever emphasis he said this to himself, he still could
not credit the hope for a moment: a strange shivering shot through his
soul; unable to utter a word, he gazed upon the sweet speaker with a
fixed eye. She shook her head in distress, sighed from her full heart,
and then proceeded in the following manner:--"We should be far superior
to you, who are another race of the human family,--for we also call
ourselves human beings, as we resemble them in form and features--had
we not one evil peculiar to ourselves. Both we and the beings I have
mentioned as inhabiting the other elements vanish into air at death and
go out of existence, spirit and body, so that no vestige of us remains;
and when you hereafter awake to a purer state of being, we shall remain
where sand, and sparks, and wind, and waves remain. Thus we have no
souls; the element moves us, and, again, is obedient to our will, while
we live, though it scatters us like dust when we die; and as we
have nothing to trouble us, we are as merry as nightingales, little
gold-fishes, and other pretty children of nature.

"But all beings aspire to rise in the scale of existence higher than