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again interested in human efforts, and were paying a flying visit to the haunts of modern genius from the Hellespont to the Mississippi. They lingered in sunny Provence, and in the dark forest-land of the Minnesingers. In the great capitals, as Rome, Berlin, Paris, London,--in smaller capitals, as Florence, Weimar, and Boston,--in many a village which had a charm for them, as Stratford-on-Avon, Ferney, and Concord in Massachusetts,--in the homes of wonderful suffering, as Ferrara and Haworth.--on many enchanted waters, as the Guadalquivir, the Rhine, the Tweed, the Hudson, Windermere, and Leman,--in many a monastic nook whence had issued a chronicle or history, in many a wild birthplace of a poem or romance, around many an old castle and stately ruin, in many a decayed seat of revelry and joyous repartee,--through the long list of the nurseries of genius and the laboratories of art, they wandered pensive and strangely affected. At length they rested from their journey to hold a council on modern literature. The long results of Christian time were unrolled before them as in a chart. They beheld the dawn of a new historic day, marked by songs of fantastic tenderness, and unwieldy, long, and jointless romances and poems, like the monsters which played in the unfinished universe before the creation of man. The Muses smiled with a look more of complaisance than approval, as they reviewed the army of Troubadours and Minnesingers and the crowd of romancers who followed in their train. They decided that the joyous array of early mediæval literature was full of promise, though something of its tone and temper was past the comprehension of pagan goddesses. The legends of saints and pictures of martyrdoms were especially mysterious to them, and they regarded them raptly, not smilingly, and bowed their heads. Anon their eyes rested on an Italian city, where uprose, as if in interstellar space, an erect figure, with a piercing eye, pleasant as Plato's voice. His countenance was fixed upon the empyrean, and a more than M
Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 34, August, 1860, page 1
by Various