Germany. The playfulness of the scene is the very evoker of the solemn
remembrances that lie hidden below. The half-sportive interlusory
revealings of the symbolic tend to the same effect. One part of the
effect from the symbolic is dependent upon the great catholic principle
of the _Idem in alio_. The symbol restores the theme, but under new
combinations of form or coloring; gives back, but changes; restores,
but idealizes.]

Ascend with me on this dazzling Whitsunday the Brocken of North Germany.
The dawn opened in cloudless beauty; it is a dawn of bridal June; but,
as the hours advanced, her youngest sister April, that sometimes cares
little for racing across both frontiers of May,--the rearward frontier,
and the vanward frontier,--frets the bridal lady's sunny temper with
sallies of wheeling and careering showers, flying and pursuing, opening
and closing, hiding and restoring. On such a morning, and reaching
the summits of the forest mountain about sunrise, we shall have one
chance the more for seeing the famous Spectre of the Brocken. [14] Who
and what is he? He is a solitary apparition, in the sense of loving
solitude; else he is not always solitary in his personal manifestations,
but, on proper occasions, has been known to unmask a strength quite
sufficient to alarm those who had been insulting him.

Now, in order to test the nature of this mysterious apparition, we
will try two or three experiments upon him. What we fear, and with
some reason, is, that, as he lived so many ages with foul pagan
sorcerers, and witnessed so many centuries of dark idolatries, his
heart may have been corrupted, and that even now his faith may be
wavering or impure. We will try.

Make the sign of the cross, and observe whether he repeats it, (as on