owledges,
who has a discriminating respect for everything that has transpired, is
historically religious, the absolute Believer and Mystic of history,
the genuine lover of Destiny. Fate is the mysticised history. Every
voluntary love, in the common signification, is a religion, which has
and can have but one apostle, one evangelist and disciple, and can be,
though not necessarily, an extra-religion (Wechsel-religion.)

'There is a series of ideal occurrences running parallel with reality.
They seldom coincide. Men and chances usually modify the ideal
occurrence, so that it appears imperfect, and its results likewise.
Thus it was in the Reformation. Instead of Protestantism appeared
Lutheranism.

'What fashions the man, but his _Life-History_? In like manner nothing
fashions great men, but the _World's-History_.

'Many men live better in the past and future time, than in the present.

'The Present indeed is not at all comprehensible without the Past, and
without a high degree of culture, an impregnation with the highest
products, with the pure spirits of the present and of previous ages;
all which assimilating guides and strengthens the human prophetic
glance, which is more indispensable to the human historian, to the
active, ideal elaborator of historic facts, than to the grammatical and
rhetorical annalist.'

III.

Novalis seems here to rehearse his whole poetic creed; or rather, he
seems to be reviewing his own poems. What he deprecates, are the faults
he most avoids. He is distinguished for extreme simplicity, both in
style and language; and the thoughts, though lofty and sometimes vast,
are yet fresh, chaste, and comprehensible. They have a domestic
sublimity. They indicate simply an infinite expansion of the poet's
heart, whose mild and primeval denizens are undisturbed by the forced,
the foreign, or the shadowy. They have a oneness of design, and are
finished and luminous to the most minute criticism. If we say that
Novalis wrote as he was inspired, never attempting to superinduce what
was only galvanic upon the true life, and never daring to write when he
was not inspired, we both describe his genius and discover the secret
of his beauty.

With one or two exceptions, the present romance is an unfavorable
specimen of his poetic powers. The subjects of most of the songs
require only that luminous simplicity alluded to, and are only fine
examples of a lyrical style, with