to
magic and enchantment, or harden the hearts of wives so that they feel
themselves infinitely exalted above their husbands, and keep them, if
they do not quite adopt their own devotional twattle, in a state of
purgatory, and in the feeling, how low they have themselves descended,
to be the saintly wives of such ordinary sinners. I knew a poor girl of
moderate capacity, who esteemed herself happy in becoming the wife of a
young man in thriving circumstances, but who, by the end of half a
year, became likewise a saint, and now juggles herself into the belief,
that her christian virtue consists in enduring her husband; she seems
to herself super-human if she does not quite despise him, but however
she says this every day to herself and her religious playmates, who
confirm her in this exercise of piety. Is not this now sin?"

"Ay surely!" suddenly sighed Kunigunde's husband; and the mother, who
saw the prop of her family visibly breaking down, repented having begun
this conversation, and was angry with her worthy friend the Baron, for
having stirred it into a blaze.

Brandenstein however, who was now at last in full career, was likewise
unable to rest in his spiritual ardour, till he had brought his whole
philippic to bear. "How elevating a spectacle is it," he proceeded more
loudly, "to see pious men, in order to devote themselves entirely to
things sacred, turn their backs on the world and all its treasures, to
live in still seclusion to one great feeling only! I will not censure
particular fraternities, when in a like spirit they immure themselves,
and will have no concern with art and history, philosophy and the
world. But when these narrow-minded devotees, who remain in the world,
who have enjoyed the same education with the rest of mankind, and
profess themselves people of cultivated minds, call out to us over and
over again, that there is only One Thing Needful, that painting, music
and poetry are not only superfluous, but even sinful, and that prayer,
the inward light and penitence, is all that ought to interest the heart
of man,--I should be inclined to ask these persons, of what narrow
feeling that which they call their religion is composed, that it cannot
and ought not to admit of love, truth, reason and the lovely forms of
the imagination? Is it then no longer true, that to the pure all things
are pure? The man to whom God no longer appears in nature and history,
is to be considered as dead; that man is lost,