that peep into the wilderness of Irrationalism, we step into a hall
with a skylight to it. Soberly and limpidly it welcomes us: its mural
decorations consist of astronomical charts and mathematical figures;
it is filled with scientific apparatus, and its cupboards contain
skeletons, stuffed apes, and anatomical specimens. But now, really
rejoicing for the first time, we direct our steps into the innermost
chamber of bliss belonging to our pavilion-dwellers; there we find
them with their wives, children, and newspapers, occupied in the
commonplace discussion of politics; we listen for a moment to their
conversation on marriage, universal suffrage, capital punishment, and
workmen's strikes, and we can scarcely believe it to be possible that
the rosary of public opinions can be told off so quickly. At length an
attempt is made to convince us of the classical taste of the inmates.
A moment's halt in the library, and the music-room suffices to show us
what we had expected all along, namely, that the best books lay on the
shelves, and that the most famous musical compositions were in the
music-cabinets. Some one actually played something to us, and even if
it were Haydn's music, Haydn could not be blamed because it sounded
like Riehl's music for the home. Meanwhile the host had found occasion
to announce to us his complete agreement with Lessing and Goethe,
although with the latter only up to the second part of Faust. At last
our pavilion-owner began to praise himself, and assured us that he who
could not be happy under his roof was beyond help and could not be
ripe for his standpoint, whereupon he offered us his coach, but with
the polite reservation that he could not assert that it would fulfil
every requirement, and that, owing to the stones on his road having
been newly laid down, we were not to mind if we were very much jolted.
Our Epicurean garden-god then took leave of us with the incomparable
skill which he praised in Voltaire.