ack Forest.

[2] A great festival in German villages, general during the months of
October and November.

THE WONDERS IN THE SPESSART.

BY KARL IMMERMANN.

[This tale occurs in the novel of "Muenchhausen," the narrator telling
it to the object of his affections. It is necessary to state this to
render the opening intelligible. The story is probably intended to
satirize the speculative tendency of the Germans, and old Albertus
Magnus seems a sort of representative of Hegel, whom Immermann openly
attacks in the course of the "Muenchhausen." To me the expression
"dialectic thought," which occurs in the Hegelian sense at p. 85, is
conclusive in this respect.--J. O.]

"Did you ever, Lisbeth, on a clear sunny day, go through a beautiful
wood, in which the blue sky peered through the green diadems above you,
where the exhalation of the trees was like a breath of God, and when
thy foot scattered a thousand glittering pearls from the pointed grass?"

"Yes, lately, Oswald dear, I went through the mountains to collect the
rents. It is delightful to walk in a green fresh wood; I could ramble
about one for whole days without meeting a soul, and without being in
the least terrified. The turf is God's mantle, and we are guarded by a
thousand angels, whether we sit or stand upon it. Now a hill--now a
rock! I ran and ran, because I always thought, 'Behind, then, must be
flying the wonderful bird with its blue and red wings, its golden crown
upon its head.' I grew hot and red with running, but not weary. One
does not get weary in a wood."

"And when you did not see the wonderful bird behind the hill in the
hedge, you stood still hard-breathing, and you heard afar in the valley
of oaks the sound of the axe, which is the forest clock, and tells that
man's hour is running even in such a lovely solitude."

"Or farther, Oswald, the free prospect up the hill between the dark
round beeches, and still closer, the brow of the hill crowned with
lofty trunks! There red cows were feeding, and shook their bells,
there the dew on the grass gave a silvery hue to the sunlit valley, and
the shadows of the cows and the trees played at hide-and-seek with each
other."

"Well, then, on such a sunny morning many hundred years ago, two young
men met one another in the wood. It was in the great woody ridge of
mountains, called Spessart, which forms the boundary between the joyous
districts of the Rhine and the fertile Fraconia. Th