e breath streams
from the crimson mouth. It is only one moment; it is the commencement of
a new existence, which already has lain long concealed in the bud: but
one does not see the magic wand which works the change. This spiritual
contrast, perhaps, took place in the past hour; perhaps the last evening
rays which fell upon the leaves concealed this power! The roses of the
garden must open; those of the heart follow the same laws. Was this
love? Love is, as poets say, a pain; it resembles the disease of the
mussel, through which pearls are formed. But Wilhelm was not sick; he
felt himself particularly full of strength and enjoyment of life. The
poet's simile of the mussel and the pearl sounds well, but it is false.
Most poets are not very learned in natural history; and, therefore, they
are guilty of many errors with regard to it. The pearl is formed on the
mussel not through disease; when an enemy attacks her she sends forth
drops in her defense, and these change into pearls. It is thus strength,
and not weakness, which creates the beautiful. It would be unjust to
call love a pain, a sickness; it is an energy of life which God has
planted in the human breast; it fills our whole being like the fragrance
which fills each leaf of the rose, and then reveals itself among the
struggles of life as a pearl of worth.

These were Wilhelm's thoughts; and yet it was not perfectly clear to him
that he loved with his whole soul, as one can only love once.

The following forenoon he paid a visit to Professor Weyse.

"You are going to Roeskelde, are you not?" asked Wilhelm. "I have heard
you so often play the organ here in Our Lady's church, I should very
much like to hear you there, in the cathedral. If I were to make the
journey, would you then play a voluntary for me?"

"You will not come!" said the musician.

"I shall come!" answered Wilhelm, and kept his word. Two days after this
conversation he rolled through the streets of Roeskelde.

"I am come for a wager! I shall hear Weyse play the organ!" said he to
the host, although there was no need for an apology.

Bulwer in his romance, "The Pilgrims of the Rhine," has with endless
grace and tenderness called forth a fairy world. The little spirits
float there as the breath of air floats around the material reality; one
is forced to believe in their existence. With a genius powerful as that
which inspired Bulwer, glorious as that which infused into Shakespeare
the fragrance we