sently did not tend to exalt my spirits.

Along the little winding path to the cemetery were moving, in solemn
procession, all the ghosts that had visited me in the night. Step by step
they approached the decaying moss-grown door of the sacred inclosure;
that silent, mournful march of spectres under the dim grey light of early
morning was a gaunt and fearful sight.

And as I lay, more dead than alive, with gaping mouth and my face wet
with cold perspiration, the head of the dismal line melted and
disappeared among the weeping willows.

There were not many spectres, left, and I was beginning to feel a little
more composed, when the very last, my uncle Christian himself, turned
round to me under the mossy gate and beckoned me to follow! A distant
faint ironical voice said--

"Caspar! Caspar! come! Six feet of this ground belong to you!"

Then he too disappeared.

A streak of crimson and purple stretched across the eastern sky announced
the coming day.

I need not tell you that I did not accept my uncle Christian's
invitation, though I am quite aware that a similar call will one day
arrive from One who must be obeyed. The remembrance of my brief abode at
Burckhardt's fort has wonderfully brought down the great opinion I had
once formed of my own importance, for the vision of that night taught me
that though orchards and meadows may not pass away their owners do, and
this fact compels to serious reflection upon the nature of our duties and
responsibilities.

I therefore wisely resolved not to risk the loss of manly energy and of
the best prizes of life by tarrying at that Capua, but to betake myself,
without further loss of time, to the pursuit of music as a science, and
I hope to produce next year, at the Royal Theatre of Berlin, an opera
which, I hope, will disarm all criticism at once.

I have come to the final conclusion that glory and renown, which
speculative people speak of as if they were mere smoke, is, after all,
the most enduring good. Life and a noble reputation do not depart
together; on the contrary, death confirms well-deserved glory and adds
to it a brighter lustre.

Suppose, for instance, that Homer returned to life, no one would dispute
with him his claim to be the author of the _Iliad_, and each would vie
with the rest to do honour to the father of epic poetry. But if
peradventure some rich landowner of that day came back to assert a claim
to the fields, the woods, the pastures of which he use