which every day unfitted him more and more for the purposes of existence.
In a word, he was a reader of the stars; a believer in the occult and
dreamy science of astrology. Bred up to the art of sculpture, he had
early in life sought Rome, as the nurse of inspiration; but even then he
had brought with him the dark and brooding temper of his northern tribe.
The images of the classic world; the bright, and cold, and beautiful
divinities, whose natures as well as shapes the marble simulation of life
is so especially adapted to represent; spoke but little to Volktman's
pre-occupied and gloomy imagination. Faithful to the superstitions and
the warriors of the North, the loveliness and majesty of the southern
creations but called forth in him the desire to apply the principles by
which they were formed to the embodying those stern visions which his
haggard and dim fancies only could invoke. This train of inspiration
preserved him, at least, from the deadliest vice in a worshipper of the
arts--commonplace. He was no servile and trite imitator; his very faults
were solemn and commanding. But before he had gained that long experience
which can alone perfect genius, his natural energies were directed to new
channels. In an illness which prevented his applying to his art, he had
accidentally sought entertainment in a certain work upon astrology. The
wild and imposing theories of the science--if science it may be
called--especially charmed and invited him. The clear bright nights of
his fatherland were brought back to his remembrance; he recalled the
mystic and unanalysed impressions with which he had gazed upon the lights
of heaven; and he imagined that the very vagueness of his feelings was a
proof of the certainty of the science.

The sons of the North are pre-eminently liable to be affected by that
romance of emotion which the hushed and starry aspect of night is
calculated to excite. The long-broken luxurious silence that, in their
frozen climate, reigns from the going down of the sun to its rise; the