dark brown mill-wheel, from which the spray rises like silver dust, and then floats away, and vanishes in the rays of the sun. Is what is not too common for the painter, too common for the poet? Is an idyl in the truest, warmest, softest colors of the soul, like the “Beautiful Miller’s Daughter,” less a work of art than a landscape by Ruysdael? And observe in these songs how the execution suits the subject; their tone is thoroughly popular, and reminds many of us, perhaps too much, of the popular songs collected by Arnim and Brentano in “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” But this could not be helped. Theocritus could not write his idyls in grand Attic Greek; he needed the homeliness of the Bœotian dialect. It was the same with Wilhelm Müller, who must not be blamed for expressions which now perhaps, more than formerly, may sound, to fastidious ears, too homely or commonplace. His simple and natural conception of nature is shown most beautifully in the “Wanderer’s Songs,” and in the “Spring Wreath from the Plauen Valley.” Nowhere do we find a labored thought or a labored word. The lovely spring world is depicted exactly as it is, but over all is thrown the life and inspiration of a poet’s eye and a poet’s mind, which perceives and gives utterance to what others fail to see, and silent nature cannot utter. It is this recognition of the beautiful in what is insignificant, of greatness in what is small, of the marvelous in ordinary life,—yes, this perception of the divine in every earthly enjoyment,—which gives its own charm to each of Wilhelm Müller’s smallest poems, and endears them so truly to those who, amidst the hurry of life, have not forgotten the delight of absorption in nature, who have never lost their faith in the mystery of the divine presence in all that is beautiful, good, and true on earth. We need only read the “Frühlingsmahl,” or “Pfingsten” to see how a whole world, aye, a whole heaven, may be mirrored in the tiniest drop of dew.