ul divinities, whose natures as well as shapes the marble
simulation of life is so especially adapted to represent; spoke but
little to Volktman's pre-occupied and gloomy imagination. Faithful to
the superstitions and the warriors of the North, the loveliness and
majesty of the southern creations but called forth in him the desire to
apply the principles by which they were formed to the embodying those
stern visions which his haggard and dim fancies only could invoke. This
train of inspiration preserved him, at least, from the deadliest vice
in a worshipper of the arts--commonplace. He was no servile and trite
imitator; his very faults were solemn and commanding. But before he had
gained that long experience which can alone perfect genius, his natural
energies were directed to new channels. In an illness which prevented
his applying to his art, he had accidentally sought entertainment in
a certain work upon astrology. The wild and imposing theories of the
science--if science it may be called--especially charmed and invited
him. The clear bright nights of his fatherland were brought back to
his remembrance; he recalled the mystic and unanalysed impressions with
which he had gazed upon the lights of heaven; and he imagined that
the very vagueness of his feelings was a proof of the certainty of the
science.

The sons of the North are pre-eminently liable to be affected by that
romance of emotion which the hushed and starry aspect of night is
calculated to excite. The long-broken luxurious silence that, in their
frozen climate, reigns from the going down of the sun to its rise; the
wandering and sudden meteors that disport, as with an impish life, along
the noiseless and solemn heaven; the peculiar radiance of the stars;
and even the sterile and severe features of the earth, which those stars
light up with their chill and ghostly serenity, serve to deepen
the effect of the wizard tales which are instilled into the ear of
childhood, and to connect the less known and more visionary impulses of
life with the influences, or at least with the associations, of Night
and Heaven.

To Volktman, more alive than even his countrymen are wont to be, to
superstitious impressions, the science on which he had chanced came with
an all-absorbing interest and fascination. He surrendered himself wholly
to his new pursuit. By degrees the block and the chisel were neglected,
and, though he still worked from time to time, he ceased to consider t