sion, like sweet voices and tinkling lutes in outer darkness. But the lot of those uttering them was a bitter one. Inexpressibly touching, well-nigh tear-awakening, are the indications here and there of those brave heretics, who dared believe that there were in Nature inexhaustible stores of beauty and consolation; if man would only lay aside his morbid, timid, crutch-requiring fears and "ideas," and boldly grasp at life. They peep out from wild songs of the people, from the half-hidden fancies of daring scholars, like rose-buds among leaves; from the bold books of philosophers and poets, some of whom were sainted, and some burned at the stake; yet who were all neither better nor worse than Troubadour and Minstrel; and their worst crime and best virtue was, that they wished to make the World and Life as brave, and merry, and honest, and free, as they ought to be.

And there is still need of those brave hearts, those merry men and maidens, who loved, and sang, and danced the antique hymn of joyousness, as it came down in fragments to them from the temples and groves of Arcady. The world is still too sad, too much given to straining the last nerve, grimly and dolefully, on idle nothings, which yield no return; too neglectful of the glory, and beauty, and gladness, which nature has lavished upon us. Come, friends, let us walk in those pleasant paths, where most free scope is given us, and do what we can for joyousness and genial truth. Let our motto, like that of La Joyeuse, be HILARITER, and with it we will drive along with

the harp-clang of stout-hearted reflections, the snapping wild-fire of hearty merriment, the trolling of gay ballads, the cheerful cries of those who push bravely on in good works; and many lovers and fair ladies shall sweep along with us, like the train of youths and maidens gay who passed away, with fair Inez, into the blue West; and all that we hope is, that all who hear our lute-music will be drawn toward us as knights were drawn of old to our fair and sovereign Lady Venus, as she swept toward the Venusberg, driving out of the way all canting fellows like the True Eckhart, who was true to nothing but dismal dog-in-the-mangerism, as such howling curs always Hilariter! Fall in with us, ye merry men-hilariter! Leave us not to plod along alone, like a minstrel with no company but his harp-hilariter there-joyously now! hilariter! Saw we not the sweep of silks, and crinolines, and scarfs among yon trees? hilariter! Come on, the road is wide enough for all; the wind and sun do no harm; sweep on in the bold crusade! hilariter !

are.

CHAPTER SECOND.

THE BALLAD AND LEGEND OF SIR TANNHÆUSER.

"THOU hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse !

Thou hast ravished my heart, with one glance of thine eyes;
Thou hast bound my heart with one chain of thy neck.

Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee.

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.
If a man were to give all his wealth for love,

It would be utterly condemned."-THE SONG OF SOLOMON.

MADAME, my very dear reader and friend-for, notwithstanding the very doleful and heart-breaking nature of the subject-matter with which this work deals, I am perfectly aware that you are still following me—THOU MADAME, addressed so tenderly as the fair ideal of readers, by Ronsard, Marot, Sterne, and all literary gallants !-permit me to tell a story, which is not malapropos to the conclusion of that last chapter, in which I proposed that we should all go riding helter-skelter, pell-mell, through the greenwood; if not to the devil together, at least to the Venusberg-the Mons Veneris of German legend-to a brave fairy-land of truth, nobility, gallantry, honor, honesty, and joyousness.

It is a good plan to illustrate a truth by a story. Æsop did it; Macchiavelli did even more; for in every proposition advanced in the "Prince," he tells two, one drawn from antiquity, the other from his own experience; a plan to be greatly commended to old-fashioned prophets, who draw all deductions for this steam-engine age out of "Man has been the same in all ages." Permit me to follow in this connection, for once, a Macchiavellian example:

The story of the Tannhauser, which I am about to relate, was learned by me many long years ago, from a strange old ballad; and when I afterward wrote the legend out in prose, I knew no more of the subject than what the ballad contained. I did not know that, just as it had strangely moved me, thrilling my very heart through long years to think that any one should have been so daring in defence of Beauty and Joyousness in a Dark Age; just so it had thrilled the German Heine, and with him many others, moving them to spin out the first thread into many a waving veil of poesy; even as the Chinese bards, out of the simple story of the Mexican Fusang, or maguey tree, spun legends of marvels. I have since learned that there are few deeply-moving and true chords, which have ever been struck, though never so faintly, which have not in some strange manner found their way to the ears, and vibrated to the hearts, of those who ought to hear them.

That Heine was one of those for whom this song was

sung, two hundred years before his birth, is manifest enough. What he said on the Tannhæuser subject, before producing his own wild paraphrase-as the musician Wagner has since done in an opera-appears in the following words:

"Strangest of all legends, romantically lovely, rings among the German race the legend of the goddess Venus; how she, when her temples were destroyed, fled into a secret mountain, where she leads the most thrilling, daring life of wild joys, in company with the merriest aërial crew; with lovely wood and water-nymphs, and with many a famed hero, who has suddenly disappeared from the world. Even from afar, as you draw near the mountain, you hear joyous laughter, and the sweet sounds of the cithern, which wind, like an invisible chain, around your heart, and draw you toward the hill. Fortunately, near the entrance, an old knight, called the True Eckhart, stands, like a statue, leaning on his great battlesword; but his honorable, iron-gray head ever nods forbiddingly, warning you against the dainty dangers which await you in the mountain. Many are deterred betimes; many, however, pay no attention to the bleating voice of the old warner, and blindly dash into the abyss of the accursed air. For a time all goes well. But Man is not always inclined to laughter; he often becomes silent and sad, and thinks back into the past, for the past is the true home of his soul, and he is carried away by homesickness for the feelings he once felt, though they be feel