his most perfect beauty,
a music which I never believed could have been given in words. This is
a poet! He has made July days in the poetry of Denmark. Natural thoughts
are so strikingly, and yet so simply expressed; one has the idea that
one could write such verses one's self, they fall so lightly."

"They are like prose," said the lady, "and yet the most beautifully
perfect verse I know. You must read the book, Mr. Thostrup!"

"Perhaps you will read to us this evening?" said Sophie. "I should very
much like to hear it again."

"In a second reading one shall enter better into the individual
beauties," said the lady of the house.

"I will remain and listen," said the host.

"This must be a masterpiece!" exclaimed Otto,"--a true masterpiece,
since all are so delighted with it."

"It is Baggesen himself; and truly as he must sing in that world where
everything mortal is ennobled."

"'Meadows all fragrance, the strongholds of pleasure,
Heaven blue streamlets,

That speed through the green woods in musical measure,'" began Otto, and
the spiritual battle-piece with beauty and tone developed itself more
and more; they found themselves in the midst of the winter camp of the
Muses, where the poet with

..."lyre on his shoulder and sword at....

Hastened to fight with the foes of the Muses." Otto's gloomy look won
during the perusal a more animated expression. "Excellent!" exclaimed
he; "this is what I myself have thought and felt, but, alas! have been
unable to express."

"I am a strange girl," said Sophie; "whenever I read a new poet of
distinguished talent, I consider that he is the greatest. It was so with
Byron and Victor Hugo. 'Cain' overwhelmed me, 'Notre Dame' carried me
away with it. Once I could imagine no greater poet than Walter Scott,
and yet I forget him over Oehlenschlaeger; yes, I remember a time when
Heiberg's vaudevilles took almost the first place among my chosen
favorites. Thus I know myself and my changeable disposition, and yet
I firmly believe that I shall make an exception with this work. Other
poets showed me the objects of the outer world, this one shows me my own
mind: my own thoughts, my own being he presents before me, and therefore
I shall always take the same interest in the Ghost's Letters."

"They are true food for the mind," said Otto; "they are as words in
season; there must be movement in the lake, otherwise it will become a
bog."

"The author is severe tow