evidence to
the contrary--Wilhelm Hauff's life must indeed have been a bright and
happy one; 'Wonnezeit voll holder Traeume,' as he himself called the
season of youth. Apparently he made no enemies, and he made every one
whom he chose his friend; his tender affection for his mother seems to
have been the mainspring of his existence; to his bride he had been
long attached in a half playful spirit, that wanted only the shadow of
a difficulty to withdraw their love into those regions of romance in
which his mind delighted to dwell. It was about a month before his
death that he produced, as a reminiscence of his northern journey, the
following story, entitled--

'THE WINE-GHOSTS OF BREMEN.'

NOTE (_written before the late incorporation of the Hanse towns with
the Empire_).

It may seem a little superfluous here to attempt to describe the
Rathskeller at Bremen, for it is well known to many travellers. But
from the method by which travellers are usually conducted through the
vaults, in which Hauff spent his grandfather's _Schalttag_ in that
bygone October, little acquaintance with the object of his story is to
be derived. The Rathhaus at Bremen, then, is by far the most
conspicuous object in the town. It contains some of the most beautiful
of the German efforts, both in stone and wood carving, of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. Whether there is any connection between the
fact that the fifteenth century preferred stone, the sixteenth wood,
and the other fact that the former of these centuries was to the Hanse
towns the epoch of glory, the latter the epoch of decay, we must leave
for Mr. Ruskin to decide. Anyhow, the men who embellished that Rathhaus
inside were as little conscious of the decay of their city as those who
built it and decorated it outside. So far as Germany is concerned, even
in the best examples of Luebeck, Augsburg, or Nuremberg, the force of
Art could no further go. But descend the steps on the left of the
building, and you will find a very different state of things. The
cellar is built as a cellar should be, strictly with a view to the
practical--that is, to the comfort of its inhabitants, the mighty
spirits imprisoned in the mighty casks. For the comfort of those who
came to commune with those mighty spirits, a broad oak settle with
strong arms would and did suffice; and the steps were made strictly
with a view to be _easy of ascent_. Since Hauff's time, and partly in