gion of light and beauty; lofty
coral-trees glow with blue and crimson fruits in their gardens; they
walk over the pure sand of the sea, among exquisitely variegated
shells, and amid whatever of beauty the old world possessed, such as
the present is no more worthy to enjoy,--creations which the floods
covered with their secret veils of silver; and now these noble
monuments sparkle below, stately and solemn, and bedewed by the water,
which loves them, and calls forth from their crevices delicate
moss-flowers and enwreathing tufts of sedge.

"Now, the nation that dwell there are very fair and lovely to behold,
for the most part more beautiful than human beings. Many a fisherman
has been so fortunate as to catch a view of a delicate maiden of the
waters, while she was floating and singing upon the deep. He would
then spread far the fame of her beauty; and to such wonderful females
men are wont to give the name of Undines.--But what need of saying
more? You, my dear husband, now actually behold an Undine before
you."

The knight would have persuaded himself that his lovely wife was under
the influence of one of her odd whims, and that she was only amusing
herself and him with her extravagant inventions. He wished it might be
so. But with whatever emphasis he said this to himself, he still could
not credit the hope for a moment: a strange shivering shot through his
soul; unable to utter a word, he gazed upon the sweet speaker with a
fixed eye. She shook her head in distress, sighed from her full heart,
and then proceeded in the following manner:--

"We should be far superior to you, who are another race of the human
family,--for we also call ourselves human beings, as we resemble them
in form and features,--had we not one evil peculiar to ourselves. Both
we and the beings I have mentioned as inhabiting the other elements
vanish into air at death and go out of existence, spirit and body, so
that no vestige of us remains; and when you hereafter awake to a purer
state of being, we shall remain where sand and sparks and wind and
waves remain. Thus, we have no souls; the element moves us, and again
is obedient to our will while we live, though it scatters us like dust
when we die; and as we have nothing to trouble us, we are as merry as
nightingales, little gold-fishes, and other pretty children of nature.

"But all beings aspire to rise in the scale of existence higher than
they are. It was therefore the wish of my father, w