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Fouqué, whose writings are now so widely read, so generally admired, and (we beg the public's pardon) so little understood among us? Was he a man who looked only at the outsides of things? receiving them in their external bearings into his mind, and reproducing them in like manner in his art? sometimes hitting by accident upon a truth, resident in the eternal form, and, indeed, inalienable from it; but scarcely perceived, and by no means appreciated by him? Or was he not rather received as it is spoken, in reverence!) in some sense a in very deed a poet,-that is to say, (be the word priest of the Invisible; a man on whose soul a charge has been laid, in whose heart a word has been spoken, and who must needs acquit himself of that charge, and give utterance to that message as he best could, at all hazards? For this is the true definition of the poet,— though few, very few, attain, or even approach to mastery over their mysterious gift. For the most part they labour and tremble beneath the burthen; speaking, half unconsciously, words which they scarcely apprehend themselves; troubled, dubious, wondering; often absolutely powerless in practice, needing help, guidance, and counsel at every moment; but enabled by a most inexplicable law to shed that light on others which their own darkened and wandering steps need, and cannot find, and grateful with a gratitude which no eloquence can express to those stronger minds or whom they are sometimes permitted to lean for a little while, and by whose aid they are enabled to give body to the vague and vivid ideas which are for ever floating before them! Not of this stamp, however, was Fouqué. He had attained to that higher elevation at which clouds and vapours are a spectacle beneath the feet, and not a difficulty in the path. He had, or believed that he had, THE TRUTH within him,-distinct, tangible, imperative. How could he choose but give voice to it? Yet, not as a preacher, observe;-the difference is great and important. His vocation was to teach truth by means of beauty; not dogmatically, and as it is in itself. That beauty became his art, and the very element of his life; but while sporting in it with the buoyancy of a child,-while studying the picturesque and wooing the graceful with his whole heart,-these all became to him, and must become to us, if we would understand him rightly, symbolical; - and were for ever converting themselves, sometimes, perhaps, even to his own surprise, into vehicles for the message which it was given him to utter. It was not that, like common allegory-manufacturers, he wanted to teach one particular doctrine, and set himself to make an allegory to fit it; but that his soul was thrilling and quivering with intense convictions, and that the romance, the fairy tale, the chivalrous adventure, beautiful as they were in themselves, and complete and independent, were but as shadows and garments of the sublimity of Truth. If this view of him be correct, two conclusions must at once be admitted. First, that it would be absurd to expect to find in “Undine” a kind of “ Pilgrim's Progress," where every particle has its distinct and unmistakeable office, right or wrong, in the working out of the intention of the writer; secondly, that it would be equally absurd (and this is speaking mildly) to consider it as a mere fairy-tale, valuable only for its exquisite originality, and the ethereal beauty of its conceptions,-destitute of deeper meaning, and a higher aim. This would be simply impossible to such a man as we have attempted to describe Fouqué. Without, therefore, distorting or desecrating this loveliest of fictions, we may allowably look for a living soul to animate the movements of its matchless form. We may expect to find that its general outline is symbolical, and in many of its minuter touches we may hope to discover a significance, real and not to be disputed, but appreciable only by the loving student. And it is only to the loving student that these pages are addressed. Him we fearlessly invite to endeavour with us so to tune his heart in accordance with the heart of the great

THE MEANING OF UNDINE. "THE meaning of Undine!" We fancy we can see the air of scornful disgust wherewith some readers will close the book when this obnoxious title meets their eyes. It is strange with what a natural antipathy to the allegorical some persons are born; it is unto them as "a gaping pig, or a harmless, necessary cat;" they scent it at the distance of miles, and close their doors hastily, lest their thresholds should be polluted by its passage. They resist its interpretations as a species of torture, a peine forte et dure inflicted upon helpless authors by inquisitorial critics, constraining them at length, however innocent, to confess themselves guilty of the meaning imputed to them. And truly, when we recall the afflicting exercises of senseless ingenuity which have annoyed this country under the name of allegory and allegorical interpretation, we cannot be greatly surprised at the horror of a reader of ordinary humanity when he encounters the word. We are a people whose nature it is to speak plainly; we deal not in hidden meanings; symbolism in its higher grades and finer texture is a mystery we care not to penetrate. Our literature, when it does venture to commit an allegory, generally works it out in a practical, businesslike manner, regularly personifying a certain number of qualities good and bad, carrying them steadily through an appropriate scries of evolutions, and setting them finally, with an unobjectionable moral, to live happy ever afterwards," or miserable, as the case may be. The allegorical meaning, and the story which thinly veils it, are thus kept comfortably distinct, and the reader may occupy himself with either, as the humour takes him, without being obtrusively annoyed by the other. Thus, since the genius of our land seldom assumes the garb, or, assuming it, wears it not easily, it has come under the treatment of a lower class of minds, and fallen into disgrace among us. The inquisitive critic who hunts for a meaning and a message in the poetry of the day (in truth often a hopeless search!) is reckoned, perhaps not unfairly, with the gossip of daily life, who spends his time in attributing motives to his neighbours which it never entered their heads to conceive, and the judicious reader turns from his "fantastic tricks" with contempt, and never admitting the idea that the absurdities of the monkey counterfeit the dignity of the man, which is, when it can be found, a real, genuine dignity, takes to himself the common and most attainable comfort of looking down upon that which he cannot understand. He forgets that the heaven which seems to him to lie beneath his feet, is as much heaven-impenetrable, unattainable, incomprehensible heaven-as that which stretches visibly above his head. Noonday we can understand; and there is no mistake about the darkness of midnight; but for the pale, shadow-haunted twilight, where the seen is for ever passing into the unseen, where the distance is thronged with phantoms, and the air voluble with sounds that are as the voice of a spirit, speaking to us in no articulate language, yet awakening thoughts by every note of its low music, we have neither eyes nor ears; yet in this strange cloud-land do the Germans live, move, and have their being. We say not that in this they are better off than ourselves; we pronounce no sentence whatever upon the matter; but admitting the fact, (and we believe that, whether in scorn or in love, the fact will generally be admitted,) we ask the candid reader whether there be any hope of his forming a just estimate of the scenery of the spiritual region, if he persists in denying that such a region exists? whether, in short, it is a fair mode of proceeding, to make up your mind in your closet that the Germans shall speak English, and then go out into the street and quarrel with the first Deutschlander you meet because he accosts you with a polite "Guten morgen?' For, let us consider a little. Who, and what, is this

minstrel, that the notes of this delicious harmony may not speak to thankless silence, but may awaken an echo and an answer, feeble, indeed, but still in unison with themselves.

What befalls him? how does the insulted divinity avenge herself? We shall see. He withdraws for a while from the world, and begins his study in earnest. The act is good, be the motive what it may, and the fruits are immediately apparent. The light, scoffing, satisfied spirit which has hitherto lived only in the present and the visible, wakes up in a moment to a perception of the mystery of life, and the wonders of the world. A finer nature would be appalled and saddened-a higher temper would be transformed and inspired; he is neither the one nor the other. In pride, not in humility, he began his task, and in the same spirit he continues,-puzzled, bewildered, it is true, nay, sometimes well-nigh frightened, but still in nowise discouraged. He falls under the scourge of superstition mocking forms crowd around him; a thousand inconsistencies, inexplicable but real, torment him. Evil in her myriad shapes, from the terrible to the disgusting, the mean, or the simply ludicrous, besets him on every hand, and he has no key to her riddles-no defence against her attacks. He cannot escape from her by returning he cannot become what he was; he has plunged into the dark forest, and he must needs go onward, till he arrives at light of some sort, whether true or illusory;—he has once discovered that the world is not made up of money, food, and clothing, and there is no rest for him till he has found out, or fancies that he has found out, of what it is really made.

Far be it from us to attempt anything so rash as a sketch of the great temple which Truth had reared for herself in the mind of Fouqué. Our business is with one little cool and solemn chapel, with its delicate sculptures, and mellow many tinted light; bearing, doubtless, its relation to the whole fabric, and echoing, ever and anon, the choral harmony which swells along the distant nave; and rich in ornaments, whose meaning can be but dimly perceived by one who knows not the symbolism of the entire structure; but still exquisite and perfect in itself, and capable of being considered separately and for itself. We shall pre-suppose a know--fit punisher of unbelief: a thousand grotesque and ledge of the story of Undine in our readers, which will enable them to follow us through the few remarks which we are about to offer; and, ere we begin, we would once more earnestly entreat them not to object to us the very fact on which our whole theory of the German genius rests-namely, that there are scenes and parts of scenes which cannot be fitted into one plan, and that the various characters frequently talk and act inconsistently with the principles which we suppose that they are intended to embody. The personality wherewith Fouqué invests his ideas is a real living personality, not an unsubstantial vapour-his story is framed artistically as a story-but the prophet-voices from time to time, speak through it, and to these we are about to listen. We protest vehemently against that captious and flimsy judgment, which, when you assert that the child is like its mother, shall answer you by pointing out a difference in the curve of the nostril, or the line of the eyebrow, as though resemblance could not exist unless every line and feature were strictly copied as though, indeed, it did not really exist rather in expression, gesture, and character, than in bones and

muscles.

Nevertheless, we are afraid. Were we to tell the patient reader who has followed us thus far, what the lesson is which we believe that Undine teaches, we assuredly think that he would follow us no farther. We will defer it therefore we will not announce it at the beginning, but will rather lead to it through the progress of the tale, buoying ourselves up with the fallacious hope that some one or two may perhaps then anticipate us, and utter of themselves the words which we have not courage to speak.

He takes refuge in the religion of nature, and the simplicity of country life. (Now, pray, reader, do not imagine that the dear old fisherman and his wife are purely allegorical; they have a meaning, it is true, in the history of this mind, whose perplexed wanderings we are trying to unravel. But they are in themselves genuine and substantial-simple, untaught, but kindly characters, with whose doings and sayings we may fairly delight ourselves, without straining our eyes to discover in them a mystical double sense which we shall often have to invent for ourselves before we can pretend to detect it.) For a little while the wandering Huldbrand believes that he has found rest; and truly, the merest glimmer of natural religion falling upon the heart, is a relief from the dark, dreary, practical scepticism of the worldling. For the image of God is everywhere, though, alas! defaced and disguised, and it is, if we mistake not, one of the offices of grace to discern that glorious image in all things, and release it from the fetters of sin and garments of falsehood wherewith In Huldbrand then-the character for whose especial Satan has been permitted to encumber it. Therefore, benefit the story appears to have been constructed, for to the mere lover of nature, for her own sake, a path is whose happiness or misery the other personages seem to open, if he would but see-a guide ready if he would have been called into existence, we have at starting a but follow. Upon this path Huldbrand is beginning to mind of great capacities and generous feelings, but enter, and the first vision which he encounters there is utterly undisciplined, moulded and sullied by the world Beauty-the most eloquent of all the voices wherewith to which it has abandoned itself; without faith, and God has gifted the earth, that it may utter his praises. unconscious of the miserable want. This man knows But he has now less chance of rest than ever. The benothing of the reality of life-he has hitherto done witching phantom beckons him a thousand ways, and nothing in earnest he has existed among stage lights eludes his grasp at every turn, now mocking, now coaxand painted pasteboard, and he cares not even to contrasting, for ever attracting, and for ever unintelligible. He them with the holy moonbeams and majestic forests whereof they are the ineffectual mimicry. He lives in willing and perpetual subjection to the pride of Intellect, and the frivolous enjoyments of the world, (symbolized as we believe by Bertalda,) and he has not, as yet, made one effort to escape from them-nay rather he deifies them, and considers them the only good. Suddenly, for the first time, he awakens to a desire after Truth, and begins to seek for it. Not indeed as a penitent, striving humbly, tearfully, and laboriously to return, if it may be, to the bosom of a scorned and forsaken mother, but gaily, and in a spirit of bravado. He has been piqued into making the effort, and he undertakes it without a doubt of victory. Like the French girl in the memoirs of Madame de Stael, he can talk very well of other things, and he will now talk a little of religion.

is enamoured of the form, but for him it has no soul; he knows not whence it is; he can discover no rule, and obtain no guidance, but he is subjected to an irresistible fascination, and he knows not whether it is for good or evil. In the system of an undisciplined mind Beauty has neither place, office, nor purpose, but is simply an influence to which he submits for the sake of the pleasure which it bestows upon him; nevertheless this Beauty is of a very different class from that of his former enjoyments they were sensual, she is spiritual, and the more incomprehensible for that very reasonhe cannot recall them while communing with her, little as he is able to understand her, without a sharp and sudden pang, telling him that he must not have both together.

Strange and mysterious is this soulless shape of Beauty to him. He cannot follow her movements, or

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Huldbrand sink, till Undine herself closes the stream, I allowed to use any violent exercise, that driving would and sets her seal upon it. Strange and most mysterious be an amusement to him, had taken the opportunity of state, where the feeble remnant of good within a man replacing them by a magnificent pair of young nearly leads him to flee from privileges which he knows that thorough-bred chestnuts; and these were the steeds now he shall abuse, and so convert into judgments! Ber- entrusted to my guidance. Not being anxious, howtalda resists this; the pride of intellect is not content ever, to emulate the fate of the unfortunate Muffington to be divorced from faith and imagination; she sees not, Spoffkins, I held them well in hand for the first three in her blind self-confidence, that they contain that or four miles, and as they became used to their work, which will destroy her, but strives to use them as gradually allowed them to quicken their pace, till we servants, and convert them to her own purposes, and were bowling along merrily at the rate of ten miles an fails, as she ever must fail, in so unhallowed an effort. hour. After this, however, the guilty pair are, for a time, A drive of about an hour and a quarter brought me happier; one step more has been taken in the hardening within sight of the little roadside public-house appointed of the heart, which seems not far from its final and for my rendezvous with Lawless. As I drew sufficiently hopeless induration. How shall we interpret Undine's near to distinguish figures, I perceived the gentleman piteous entreaty, "that he will not chide her upon the in question scientifically and picturesquely attired in water?" What is that last little safeguard, which, what might with great propriety be termed no end of a when withdrawn, leaves the sinner to pursue his course shooting jacket, inasmuch as its waist, being prolonged unchecked by warning, untroubled by remorse? May to a strange and unaccountable extent, had, as a necesit not, perhaps, signify reverence, that instinctive sary consequence, invaded the region of the skirt to a shame of the soul in the presence of truth, which has degree which reduced that appendage to the most in it the germ of repentance and the hope of restoration? absurd and infinitesimal proportions. This wonderful However this may be, the final offence is committed-garment was composed of a fabric which Freddy Colethe cup is full-and the guardian angel departs! man, when he made its acquaintance some few days Undine leaves the faithless Huldbrand, with love and later, denominated the Mac Omnibus plaid, a gaudy grief in her last farewell. repertoire of colours embracing all the tints of the rainbow, and a few more besides, and was further embellished by a plentiful supply of gent's sporting buttons, which latter articles were not quite so large as cheeseplates, and represented in bas-relief a series of moving incidents by flood and field. His nether man exhibited a complicated arrangement of corduroys, leather gaiters, and waterproof boots, which were, of course, wet through; while, to crown the whole, his head was adorned with one of those round felt hats which exactly resemble a boiled apple pudding, and are known by the sobriquet of "wide-awakes," "cos they av'n't got no nap about 'em." A stout shooting pony was standing at the door of the ale-house, with a pair of panniers, containing a portmanteau and a gun-case, slung across its back, upon which was seated in triumph the mighty Shrimp, who seemed to possess the singular property of growing older, and nothing else; for, as well as one could judge by appearances, he had not increased an inch in stature since the first day of our acquaintance. His attitude, as I drove up, was one which Hunt would have delighted in perpetuating. Perched on a kind of pack-saddle, his legs stretched so widely apart, by reason of the stout proportions of the pony, as to be nearly at right angles with his upper man, he held aloft (not a 'snowy scarf" but) a pewter pot nearly as large as himself, the contents of which he was transferring to his own throat with an air of relish and savoirfaire, which would have done credit to a seven-feethigh coalheaver. The group was completed by a gamekeeper, who, seated on a low wooden bench, was dividing some bread and cheese with a magnificent black

The loud, uneasy revel of guilt succeeds; and on this we need not dwell. Neither shall we attempt to describe in words the awful beauty of the conclusion, when the rash Bertalda causes the stone to be removed when some sin more atrocious, some profaneness more glaring, than the habitual sins and profanenesses of the soul, startles the conscience into activity-and Undine returns; returns in her beauty, her sadness, and her holiness; returns in her love, to slay the penitent by tears! So only could they be reunited, so only can we admit a trembling hope for the miserable Huldbrand. But the subject is too solemn to be dwelt on here, or by us.

In conclusion we would say one word upon a part of the story which seems to us deeply significant, but the interpretation of which we offer with some doubt the origin of Undine, and that of Bertalda. Yet surely it can scarcely be accidental, that Bertalda, whom we have supposed to typify the human part of man's soul, the intellect and passions, is born of nature, and has her natural home upon earth, while the origin of Undine, the pure, the spiritual, the imaginative, is wrapped in mystery. She is no natural product of the heart of man; she is a gift and a revelation, and she is born of water!

And now, reader, if you be weary and indignant, we beseech you to call to mind that couplet of Burns'"What's done ye partly may compute, But know not what's resisted!"

For every conjectural interpretation of our author's meaning wherein we have indulged ourselves, we might easily have presented you with ten, and, when you contemplate the alternative, we think you will, on the whole, be disposed to regard us with gratitude.

FRANK FAIRLEGH;

OR, OLD COMPANIONS IN NEW SCENES.1

CHAP. XII.

LAWLESS'S MATINEE MUSICALE.

S. M.

I SCARCELY know any excitement more agreeable than driving, on a fine cold day, a pair of spirited horses, which demand the exercise of all one's coolness and skill to keep their fiery natures under proper control. Some accident had happened to one of Sir John's old phacton horses, and Harry, who fancied, as he was not (1) Continued from 279. p.

retriever.

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"By Jove! what splendid steppers!" was Lawless's exclamation, as I drove up. "Now, that's what I call perfect action; high enough to look well, without battering the feet to pieces-the leg a little arched, and thrown out boldly-no fear of their putting down their pins in the same place they pick them up from. Ah!" he continued, for the first time observing me, "Fairlegh, how are you, old fellow? Slap up cattle you've got there, and no mistake-belong to Sir John Oaklands, I suppose. Do you happen to know where he got hold of them?"

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Harry wanted a pair of phaeton horses, and the coachman recommended these," replied I; “but I've no idea where he heard of them."

"Rising five and six," continued Lawless, examining their mouths with deep interest; "no do there-the tush well up in one, and nicely through in the other, and the mark in the nippers just as it should be to correspond: own brothers I'll bet 1004.-good full eyes,