THE red rays of an autumn sunset spread a halo over the turrets of Castle D which in its ruins seemed as an eloquent wreck of the mighty past appealing to the future; a melancholy voice, telling of power and magnificence, when all had departed. 'Proud though in desolation,' it stood like some hoary representative of a fallen house, whose lofty bearing and unconquerable spirit are all that remain of the fairy tale of life. Below lay the ancient shadows of the Black Forest; and now its paths grew dimmer, and its long vistas darker; and at last not a ray was seen over the mingled gloom, save the red glow on the western tower of the venerable castle. Passing through one of its narrow casements, the mild warm sunlight streamed along a small desolate apartment; and lighted the pale cheek of a student, who sat with brow resting on his hand, and compressed lips, and bright but restless gaze. Papers and folios lay in confusion around him, evidently flung aside in some mood of impatience or abstraction; for his intellectual eye was fixed, now on vacancy, now on the clear and beautiful sunset; and its rapid flashes seemed movements of thought, whose energies were concentrated on some one all-absorbing subject. Yet it was not the deep and constant expression of the searcher for hidden truths; but as if the soul felt the restraining bars of its prison-house press upon the energies, like the closing dungeon of the Italian, whose walls at last crushed its priIt was the mighty struggle of a mind to whom years of patient plodding through the tomes of learning, had brought this meed of knowledge-that nothing had been learned; that JUNE, 1840. soner. 1 I 66 A habit of humble and daily trust for daily support, and a temperament that suffered not the heart to be troubled by that future which might never arrive, gave an evenness to her disposition, and serenity and quiet joy, that seemed like sweet sunshine over her unclouded brow. Kriesler looked on his sister, and felt strong with a superhuman strength to do all things for her; and then, in the consciousness of his utter inability, he would seek the solitude of his own apartment, and let the torrent of his emotions pass. And yet, he asked himself, What is it?-what is any earthly event, that the mighty mind should bow before it? Petty contingencies, that weigh down the balance of more worthy things; the sleeping giant chained by pigmies! Eternal in duration, independent in existence, sufficient to itself, what has the mind to do with extrinsic circumstances, and why is it not free and powerful, whether the body, created only for its use, pines in deprivation, or writhes in pain, or rejoices in strength? Chained in a prison, and subject to laws that govern the material atoms around it; perceiving things but by their visible species, yet conscious of an innate power of knowing their very nature; conscious that in its birth-right, and as portion of the divine essence, it could see in its own light, and penetrate by its own subtilty the mysteries of things it now beholds only by the senses. Then he applied more deeply to his studies, and dreamed of a potency in wisdom; for his philosophizing mind caught that shadow in early years, and its redundant and untutored fertility ran wild in its undirected course; as the strong and luxuriant vines of the Indies twine round the Upas that poisons their roots. The same disposition that directed him to find in wisdom the secret of an undefined power, led him on its paths by a fascination that often left behind the first object of his pursuit; and he passed days and nights in that western tower, poring over the secrets of the unseen; for scarcely could sleep be called a cessation of that intellectual current in which his thoughts seemed flowing onward, with ever-increasing rapidity, to their ocean of boundless knowledge; and even then, there were gleams that afterward he treasured as revealings of a higher existence. Mental philosophy pretends to explain the phenomena of the wild yet partial action of the mind in sleep; but to a soul fed from childhood with philosophical mysticism, it were not strange if waking hours were tinged with some colours reflected from the mirror of dreams. To such, they were messengers from the world of spirits; and soul |