into itself. Then stars arise, and the night is holy.

Paul Flemming had experienced this, though still young. The
friend of his youth was dead. The bough had broken "under the burden
of the unripe fruit." And when, after a season, he looked up again
from the blindness of his sorrow, all things seemed unreal. Like the
man, whose sight had been restored by miracle, he beheld men, as
trees, walking. His household gods were broken. He had no home. His
sympathies cried aloud from his desolate soul, and there came no
answer from the busy, turbulent world around him. He did not
willingly give way to grief. He struggled to be cheerful,--to be
strong. But he could no longer look into the familiar faces of his
friends. He could no longer live alone, where he had lived with her.
He went abroad, that the sea might be between him and the grave.
Alas! betweenhim and his sorrow there could be no sea, but that of
time.

He had already passed many months in lonely wandering, and was
now pursuing his way along the Rhine, to the south of Germany. He
had journeyed the same way before, in brighter days and a brighter
season of the year, in the May of life and in the month of May. He
knew the beauteous river all by heart;--every rock and ruin, every
echo, every legend. The ancient castles, grim and hoar, that had
taken root as it were on the cliffs,--they were all his; for his
thoughts dwelt in them, and the wind told him tales.

He had passed a sleepless night at Rolandseck, and had risen
before daybreak. He opened the window of the balcony to hear the
rushing of the Rhine. It was a damp December morning; and clouds
were passing over the sky,--thin, vapory clouds, whose snow-white