sic to which the heart's
pulsations vibrate: "Banco, Banco, a hundred thousand Banco!" and all
by steam--by mind and spirit.

It was evening. I stood on the heights of Trollhaetta's old sluices,
and saw the ships with outspread sails glide away through the meadows
like spectres, large and white. The sluice gates were opened with a
ponderous and crashing sound, like that related of the copper gates of
the secret council in Germany. The evening was so still that
Trollhaetta's Fall was as audible in the deep stillness, as if it were
a chorus from a hundred water-mills--ever one and the same tone. In
one, however, there sounded a mightier crash that seemed to pass sheer
through the earth; and yet with all this the endless silence of nature
was felt. Suddenly a large bird flew out from the trees, far in the
forest, down towards the Falls. Was it the mountain sprite?--We will
imagine so, for it is the most interesting fancy.

THE BIRD PHOENIX.

* * * * *

In the garden of Paradise, under the tree of knowledge, stood a hedge
of roses. In the first rose a bird was hatched; its flight was like
that of light, its colours beautiful, its song magnificent.

But when Eve plucked the fruit of knowledge, when she and Adam were
driven from the garden of Paradise, a spark from the avenging angel's
flaming sword fell into the bird's nest and kindled it. The bird died
in the flames, but from the red egg there flew a new one--the only
one--the ever only bird Phoenix. The legend states that it takes up
its abode in Arabia; that every hundred years it burns itself up in
its nest, and that a new Phoenix, the only one in the world, flies out
from the red egg.

The bird hovers around us, rapid as the light, beautiful in colour,
glorious in song. When the mother sits by the child's cradle, it is by
the pillow, and with its wings flutters a glory around the child's
head. It flies through the chamber of contentment, and there is the
sun's radiance within:--the poor chest of drawers is odoriferous with
violets.

But the bird Phoenix is not alone Arabia's bird: it flutters in the
rays of the Northern Lights on Lapland's icy plains; it hops amongst
the yellow flowers in Greenland's short summer. Under Fahlun's copper
rocks, in England's coal mines, it flies like a powdered moth over the
hymn-book in the pious workman's hands. It sails on the lotus-leaf
down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eyes of