a few glimpses of his true genius.
"Astralis," the poem that introduces the second part, is unlike the
rest of the volume, being an irregular, mystic embodyment of the hero's
destinies,--a recapitulation of the past and a presentiment of the
future. The romance is unfavorable, excepting one or two prose passages
of great sublimity, much resembling the "Hymns to the Night," one or
two of which are given below. The dream at the close of the sixth
chapter may be particularly designated. "The image of Death, and of the
River being the Sky in that other and eternal Country, seems to us a
fine and touching one: there is in it a trace of that simplicity, that
soft, still pathos, which are characteristics of Novalis, and doubtless
the highest of his specially poetic gifts." But it is in his Spiritual
Songs that we gain a glimpse of his true genius. They are eminently
devotional, and indiscriminately addressed to the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Virgin. A translation of the mass of them would form a most
desirable hymn book for the Christian, though, to be sure, it would be
very graceless to supplant worthy old Dr. Watts. But they are very
sweet and touching, and full of pious fervor. We have been struck with
the similarity of their tone to those of George Herbert, who stands
with the Father and the Son at the very door of his heart, with tearful
and familiar supplication for them to enter.

"Geusz, Vater, Ihn gewaltig aus,
Gib Ihn aus deinem Arm heraus:
_Nur Unschuld, Lieb' und suesze Scham_
_Hielt Ihn, dasz er nicht laengst schon kam_.

"Treib' Ihn von dir in unsern Arm,
_Dasz er von deinem Hauch noch warm_;
In schweren Wolken sammle ihn,
Und lasz Ihn so hernieder ziehn."

Among his promiscuous poems is a beautiful lyric, representing the
triumph of Faith over Sorrow, under the symbol of a beautiful child
bringing to him a wand, beneath whose touch the Queen of Serpents
yields to him the "precious jewel."

The following is the first Hymn to the Night:

"What living, sense-endowed being loves not, before all the prodigies
of the far extending space around him, the all-rejoicing light with its
colors, its beams and billows, its mild omnipresence, as waking day?
The restless giant-world of the stars, swimming with dancing motion in
its azure flood. Inhales it as its life's inmost soul; the sparkling,
ever-resting stone, the sensitive, imbibing plant, and the wild,
burnin