not the least singular part of the affair, is, that, having grown
older, and I hope colder, she should herself publish the letters
which passed between her and Goethe."

"Particularly the letter in which she describes her first visit
to Weimar, and her interview with the hitherto invisible divinity of
her dreams. The old gentleman took her upon his knees, and she fell
asleep with her head upon his shoulder. It reminds me of Titania and
Nick Bottom, begging your pardon, always, for comparing your
All-sided-One to Nick Bottom. Oberon must have touched her eyes with
the juice of Love-in-idleness. However, this book of Goethe's
Correspondence with a Child is a very singular and valuable
revelation of the feelings, which he excited in female hearts. You
say she afterwards married Achim von Arnim?"

"Yes; and he and her brother, Clemens Brentano, published that
wondrous book, the Boy's Wonder-Horn."

"The Boy's Wonder-Horn!" said Flemming, after a short pause, for
the name seemed to have thrown him into a reverie;--"I know the book
almost by heart. Of all your German books it is the one which
produces upon my imagination the most wild and magic influence. I
have a passion for ballads!"

"And who has not?" said the Baron with asmile. "They are the
gypsy-children of song, born under green hedgerows, in the leafy
lanes and by-paths of literature,--in the genial summer-time."

"Why do you say summer-time and not summer?" inquired Flemming.
"The expression reminds me of your old Minnesingers;--of Heinrich