Can it be said that there is such an art as that of music for those who cannot feel enthusiasm ? Habit may render harmonious sounds, as it were, a necessary gratification to them, and they enjoy them as they do the flavor of fruits, or the ornament of colors; but has their whole being vibrated and trembled responsively, like a lyre, if at any time the midnight silence. has been suddenly broken by the song, or by any of those instruments which resemble the human voice? Have they in that moment felt the mystery of their existence in that softening emotion which reunites our separate natures, and blends in the same enjoyment the senses of the soul? Have the beatings of the heart followed the cadence of the music? Have they learned, under the influence of these emotions so full of charms, to shed those tears which have nothing of self in them; those tears which do not ask for the compassion of others, but which relieve ourselves from the inquietude which arises from the need of something to admire and to love?

The taste for public spectacles is universal; for the greater part of mankind have more imagination than they themselves think, and that which they consider as the allurement of pleasure, as a remnant of the weakness of childhood which still hangs about them, is often the better part of their nature; while they are beholding the scenes of fictions, they are true, natural, and feeling; whereas in the world, dissimulation, calculation, and vanity, are the absolute masters of their words, sentiments, and actions. But do they think that they have felt all that a really fine tragedy can inspire, who find in the representation of the strongest affections nothing but a diver sion and amusement? Do they doubt and disbelieve that rapturous agitation which the passions, purified by poetry, excite within us? Ah! how many and how great are the pleasures which spring from fictions! The interest they raise is without either apprehension or remorse; and the sensibility which they call forth has none of that painful harshness from which real passions are scarcely ever exempt.

What enchantment does not the language of love borrow from poetry and the fine arts! How beautiful is it to love at

once with the heart and with the mind! thus to vary in a thousand fashions a sentiment which one word is indeed sufficient to express, but for which all the words of the world are but poverty and weakness! to submit entirely to the influence of those masterpieces of the imagination, which all depend upon love, and to discover in the wonders of nature and genius new expressions to declare the feelings of our own heart!

What have they known of love who have not reverenced and admired the woman whom they loved, in whom the sentiment is not a hymn breathed from the heart, and who do not perceive in grace and beauty the heavenly image of the most touching passions? What has she felt of love who has not seen in the object of her choice an exalted protector, a powerful and a gentle guide, whose look at once commands and supplicates, and who receives upon his knees the right of disposing of her fate? How inexpressible is the delight which serious reflections, united and blended with warm and lively impressions, produce! The tenderness of a friend, in whose hands our happiness is deposited, ought, at the gates of the tomb, in the same manner as in the beautiful days of our youth, to form our chief blessing; and every thing most serious and solemn in our existence transforms itself into emotions of delight, when, as in the fable of the ancients, it is the office or love to light and to extinguish the torch of life.

If enthusiasm fills the soul with happiness, by a strange and wondrous charm, it forms also its chief support under misfortune; it leaves behind it a deep trace and a path of light, which do not allow absence itself to efface us from the hearts of our friends. It affords also to ourselves an asylum from the utmost bitterness of sorrow, and is the only feeling which can give tranquillity without indifference.

Even the most simple affections which every heart believes Itself capable of feeling, even filial and maternal love, cannot be felt in their full strength, unless enthusiasm be blended with them. How can we love a son without indulging the flattering hope that he will be generous and gallant, without wishing him that renown which may, as it were, multiply his existence,

and make us hear from every side the name which our own heart is continually repeating? Why should we not enjoy with rapture the talents of a son, the beauty of a daughter? Can there be a more strange ingratitude towards the Deity than indifference for his gifts? Are they not from heaven, since they render it a more easy task for us to please him whom we love?

Meanwhile, should some misfortune deprive our child of these advantages, the same sentiment would then assume another form; it would increase and exalt within us the feeling of compassion, of sympathy, the happiness of being necessary to him. Under all circumstances, enthusiasm either animates or consoles; and even in the moment when the blow, the most cruel that can be struck, reaches us, when we lose him to whom we owe our own being, him whom we loved as a tutelary angel, and who inspired us at once with a fearless respect and a boundless confidence, still enthusiasm comes to our assistance and support. It brings together within us some sparks of that soul which has passed away to heaven; we still live before him, and we promise ourselves that we will one day transinit to posterity the history of his life. Never, we feel assured, never will his paternal hand abandon us entirely in this world; and his image, affectionate and tender, still inclines towards us, to support us, until we are called unto him.

And in the end, when the hour of trial comes, when it is for us in our turn to meet the struggle of death, the increasing weakness of our faculties, the loss and ruin of our hopes, this life, before so strong, which now begins to give way within us, the crowd of feelings and ideas which lived within our bosoms, and which the shades of the tomb already surround and envelope, our interests, our passions, this existence itself, which lessens to a shadow, before it vanishes away-all deeply distress us, and the common man appears, when be expires, to have less of death to undergo. Blessed be God, however, for the assistance which he has prepared for us even in that moment; our utterance shall be imperfect, our eyes snali no longer distinguish the light, our reflections, before clear and connected, shall wan

der vague and confused; but enthusiasm will not abandon us, her brilliant wings shall wave over the funeral couch; she will lift the veil of death; she will recall to our recollection those moments, when, in the fulness of energy, we felt that the heart was imperishable; and our last sigh shall be a high and generous thought, reascending to that heaven from which it had its birth.

"O France! land of glory and of love! if the day should ever come when enthusiasm shall be extinct upon your soil, when all shall be governed and disposed upon calculation, and even the contempt of danger shall be founded only upon the conclusions of reason, in that day what will avail you the loveliness of your climate, the splendor of your intellect, the general fertility of your nature? Their intelligent activity, and an impetuosity directed by prudence and knowledge, may indeed give your children the empire of the world; but the only traces you will leave on the face of that world will be like those of the sandy whirlpool, terrible as the waves, and sterile as the desert!"

This last sentence is that which excited in the French police the greatest' indignation against my book. It seems to me, that Frenchmen at least cannot be displeased with it.

• Madaine de Staël has said the same of another passage, p. 244.—Ed.

APPENDIX A.

GENERAL SURVEY OF GERMAN LITERATURE TO THE Close of the Eighteenth CentuRY.1 BY MAx Müller, M. A., ProfesSOR OF EUROPEAN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE AT OXFORD.

THERE is no country where so much interest is taken in the literature of Germany as in England, as there is no country where the literature of England is so much appreciated as in Germany. Some of our modern classics, whether poets or philosophers, are read by Englishmen with the same attention as their own; and the historians, the novel-writers, and the poets of England have exercised, and continue to exercise, a most powerful and beneficial influence on the people of Germany. In recent times, the literature of the two countries has almost grown into one. Lord Macaulay's History has not only been translated into German, but reprinted at Leipsig in the original; and it is said to have had a larger sale in Germany than the work of any German historian. Baron Humboldt and Baron Bunsen address their writings to the English as much as to the German public. The novels of Dickens and Thackeray are expected with the same impatience at Leipsig and Berlin as in London. The two great German classics, Schiller and Goethe, have found their most successful biographers in Carlyle and Lewes; and several works of German scholarship have met with more attentive and thoughtful read

1 We take this from the introduction to Müller's German Classics, re sently published in England.-Ed.