cepted the invitation of Count Roumyanzov to accompany the
latter on a voyage round the world. The ships left Kronstadt in 1815,
and returned in 1818, and although the discovery of a north-west
passage--the object of the expedition--was not accomplished, yet
extensive acquisitions were made in every department of scientific
research.

Chamisso's share in the voyage is recorded in the third volume of the
account of it published at Weimar in 1821, and does honour to his spirit
of careful observation and his accuracy. Like Darwin after him,
Chamisso has related his experiences interspersed with scientific
observations. He now again fixed his residence at Berlin, from which
University he received the degree of Doctor in Philosophy. An
appointment at the Botanic Gardens allowed him full liberty to follow
up his favourite pursuit of Natural History, and bound him by still
stronger ties to his second fatherland. He soon married Antonie Piaste,
a relation of Hitzig. Chamisso then wrote an account of the principal
plants of the north of Germany, with views respecting the vegetable
kingdom, and science of Botany; this work appeared at Berlin in 1827.
Poetry, however, had still some share of his attention; and he
continued, during the latter years of his life, to maintain his claims
to an honourable place among the poets of Germany. In 1829 he published
his famous work "Salas y Gomez." Several of his ballads and romances
rank with the most distinguished of modern times in this branch of
composition. With regard to the story before us, the narrative of Peter
Schlemihl, it is in any case very original. At once comic and tragic,
grotesque and terrible, it is full of gaiety and emotion, and the
supernatural, phantastic and absurd are skillfully mixed with natural
and real elements. From the world which we inhabit the author leads us
into the realm of mystery--and yet, while we experience sensations of
the marvellous, we do not seem to leave the world of reality. And
herein lies the difference between Peter Schlemihl and other tales of
the period. In Tieck and Arnim the fairy and real worlds are opposed
and hostile to each other, in Fouque's _Undine_ these elements are
reconciled, but the events are laid in the middle-ages, when people
believed in fairies. Chamisso, however, wields into one the
supernatural and the real and writes a fable in accordance with modern
civilization! Of course, Chamisso cannot be compared with Ariosto and
T