But we become diffuse. There are many scenes in the quiet life of Richter, that, like the above, are perfect domestic idyls--but we must hasten to the last; ’tis like those which preceded it, surpassing lovely. Never have we encountered, in the wide world of biographic books, a death-bed scene, so full of love, and joy, and peace, as the death-bed of Jean Paul Frederick Richter. Nothing more, however, than one might have expected; for men generally--so experienced clergymen observe--die as they live. One thing only we must remark, before giving our last extracts; towards the close of his career, the bright, sun-gazing genius of Richter was struck, like Milton’s, not with celestial, but with terrestrial blindness. For some space before he died, his favourite world of flowers and green fields was already a blank to him. In the month of October 1823, his nephew, Otto Spazier, to whom we are indebted for the principal part of these biographical details, shortly before his death, being called to visit the blind old poet, writes as follows:-- “‘Such a call from the immortal old man, as it entered my solitary apartment,’ says his nephew, ‘filled me with delight. The reverend image of his beautiful old age, a just reward for a holy life, rose before me, and with joyful haste I travelled through the wet days of October, and entered his study on the evening of the twenty-fourth of that month. The same joyful tremor affected me as formerly, when, at the twilight hour, I had listened here with his family to the voice of wisdom. The windows of his room looked towards the rising sun, and far over the garden and over scattered trees and houses, towards the Flichtelgebirge, that bounded the horizon. A mingled perfume of flowers and grapes led the fancy to southern climes, to beautiful blue June days, or to the vintage on the Rhine. His sofa, where he usually read in a reclining posture, was opposite this window, and before it his writing table, upon which appeared a regular confusion of pens, paper of all colours, glasses, flowers, books, among which last were the small English editions of Swift and Sterne. At the other window stood a small piano, and near this a smaller table. Depending from the cage of his birds was a little ladder, that led to his own work-table, where the birds were permitted to roam among the confusion, sprinkling with water from the flower glass the sheet upon which the poet was writing. Often was Paul seen to stop in his most excited passages, to let his little canary, with her young, travel, undisturbed, over the page, where the water she scattered from her feathers mingled with the ink from his pen. In the corner of the room was a door by which, unobserved, Richter could descend the steps into the garden, and on a cushion near it rested his white, silky-haired poodle. A hunting pocket and rosewood staff hung near.