happiness. Topbooted Graziers from the North; Swiss Brokers, Italian
Drovers, also topbooted, from the South; these with their subalterns in
leather jerkins, leather skull-caps, and long ox-goads; shouting in
half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate barking and bellowing. Apart
stood Potters from far Saxony, with their crockery in fair rows; Nurnberg
Pedlers, in booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz bazaars; Showmen
from the Lago Maggiore; detachments of the _Wiener Schub_ (Offscourings of
Vienna) vociferously superintending games of chance. Ballad-singers
brayed, Auctioneers grew hoarse; cheap New Wine (_heuriger_) flowed like
water, still worse confounding the confusion; and high over all, vaulted,
in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particolored Merry-Andrew, like the genius
of the place and of Life itself.

"Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence; under the deep heavenly
Firmament; waited on by the four golden Seasons, with their vicissitudes of
contribution, for even grim Winter brought its skating-matches and
shooting-matches, its snow-storms and Christmas-carols,--did the Child sit
and learn. These things were the Alphabet, whereby in aftertime he was to
syllable and partly read the grand Volume of the World: what matters it
whether such Alphabet be in large gilt letters or in small ungilt ones, so
you have an eye to read it? For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of
looking thereon was a blessedness that gilded all: his existence was a
bright, soft element of Joy; out of which, as in Prospero's Island, wonder
after wonder bodied itself forth, to teach by charming.

"Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even then my felicity
was perfect. I had, once for all, come down from Heaven into the Earth.
Among the rainbow colors that glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood a
dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and often quite
overshone; yet always it reappeared, nay ever waxing broader and broader;