from favor or from fear.

If, then, once in childhood you suffered an affliction that was
ineffable,--if once, when powerless to face such an enemy, you were
summoned to fight with the tiger that couches within the separations
of the grave,--in that case, after the example of Judaea, [17] sitting
under her palm tree to weep, but sitting with her head veiled, do you
also veil your head. Many years are passed away since then; and perhaps
you were a little ignorant thing at that time, hardly above six years
old. But your heart was deeper than the Danube; and, as was your love, so
was your grief. Many years are gone since that darkness settled on your
head; many summers, many winters; yet still its shadows wheel round upon
you at intervals, like these April showers upon this glory of bridal
June. Therefore now, on this dove-like morning of Pentecost, do you veil
your head like Judaea in memory of that transcendent woe, and in
testimony that, indeed, it surpassed all utterance of words. Immediately
you see that the apparition of the Brocken veils _his_ head, after the
model of Judaea weeping under her palm tree, as if he also had a human
heart; and as if _he_ also, in childhood, having suffered an affliction
which was ineffable, wished by these mute symbols to breathe a sigh
towards heaven in memory of that transcendent woe, and by way of record,
though many a year after, that it was indeed unutterable by words.


FOOTNOTES

[1] As occasions arise in these Sketches, when, merely for the purposes
of intelligibility, it becomes requisite to call into notice such
personal distinctions in my family as otherwise might be unimportant, I
here record the entire list of my brothers and sisters, according to