clock, reaches you;--then arises the sweet and manifold fragrance of
flowers,--the birds begin to sing,--the vapors roll away,--up comes
the glorious sun,--you revel like the lark in the sunshine and
bright blue heaven, and all is a delirious dream of soul and
sense,--when suddenly a friend at your elbow laughs aloud, and
offers you a piece of Bologna sausage. As in real life, so in his
writings,--the serious and the comic, the sublime and the grotesque,
the pathetic and the ludicrous are mingled together. At times he is
sententious, energetic, simple; then again, obscure and diffuse. His
thoughts are like mummies embalmed in spices, and wrapped about with
curious envelopements; but within these the thoughts themselves are
kings. At times glad, beautiful images, airy forms, move by you,
graceful, harmonious;--at times the glaring, wild-looking fancies,
chained together by hyphens, brackets, and dashes, brave and base,
high and low, all in their motley dresses, go sweeping down the
dusty page, like the galley-slaves, that sweep the streets of Rome,
where you may chance to see the nobleman and the peasant manacled
together."

Flemming smiled at the German's warmth, to which the presence of
the lady, and the Laubenheimer wine, seemed each to have contributed
something, and then said;

"Better an outlaw, than not free!--These are his own words. And
thus he changes at his will. Like the God Thor, of the old Northern
mythology, he now holds forth the seven bright stars in the bright
heaven above us, and now hides himself in clouds, and pounds away
with his great hammer."

"And yet this is not affectation in him," rejoined the German.