In all branches of knowledge, the perception is gaining ground, how intensely our thinking and feeling has been damaged by the supremacy of the Abstract and of Phraseology. Here and there, efforts are being made, to return from dry, colourless, hyperbolical abstractions, to the tangible, living, glowing Concrete; from idle self-contemplation, into close relation with life and the present, and from hackneyed formulas and patterns, to an investigating analysis of nature, and a creative productivity, instead of mere barren criticism. Who knows, but our grandchildren may yet live to see the day, when people will speak of many a former colossus of science, with the same smiling veneration, as of the remains of a gigantic antediluvian animal; and when one may avow, without fear of being cried down as a barbarian, that in a jug of good old wine, there is as much wisdom, as in many a voluminous production of dry dialectics. To the restitution of a serene, unbiassed view of things, adorned by poetry, the following work would wish to contribute; taking its materials out of our German Past. Amongst the vast collection of valuable matter, enclosed in the big folios of the "_Monumenta Germaniae_" by Pertz, are the tales of the monasteries in St. Gall, which monk Ratpert began, and Ekkehard the younger (called also the fourth, to distinguish him, from three other members of the cloister, bearing the same name), continued till the end of the 10th century. Whoever has painfully tracked his weary road, through the many unsatisfactory dry-as-dust chronicles of other monasteries, will linger with real pleasure and inward delight, over these last named annals. There, one finds, in spite of manifold prejudices and awkwardnesses, an abundance of graceful and interesting tales, taken from accounts of eye and ear witnesses. Persons and circumstances are drawn with rough, but distinct lineaments, whilst a sort of unconscious poetry,--a thoroughly honest and genuine view of life and the world, as well as a naïve freshness and originality, puts a stamp of truth and genuineness on everything that is told; even when persons and events are not strictly subjected to the laws of time; and when a very tangible anachronism, causes very slight uneasiness to the chronicler.