But the poet meets with a peculiar fate, when trying to acquaint himself with the old Past. Where others, into whose veins nature has instilled some "_aqua fortis_,"--as the result of their labours produce many an abstract theory, and a quantity of instructive deductions,--to him appear a host of fantastic figures, that, at first surrounded by floating mists, become always clearer and clearer; and they look at him with pleading eyes, dance around his couch in midnight hours, and always whisper to him, "give us a living form." Thus it was here. Out of the old Latin cloister-tales there arose, like rocks out of the water, the towers and walls of the monastery of St. Gall. Scores of grey-headed, venerable friars wandered up and down in the ancient cross-passages; behind the old manuscripts sat those who had once written them; the cloister-pupils played merrily in the courtyard; from the choir rose the solemn chaunts at midnight, and from the tower the clear sound of the bugle announced the approach of visitors. But before all other forms, there arose in dazzling beauty, that noble, haughty Dame, who carried off the youthful master from the quiet and peace of the cloister of St. Gall, to her rocky castle high over the Bodensee, there, to teach and propagate the old classics. The simple account given by the chronicler, of that quiet life, dedicated to the study of Virgil, is in itself a piece of poetry as beautiful and genuine as can be found anywhere. He, however, who is beset by such apparitions cannot exorcise them otherwise, but by doing their will; trying to condense and fix their fleeting shapes. And not having read in vain in the old stories, how "Notker the stutterer," once treated similar visions, viz. by taking a strong hazel wand and therewith belabouring the spectres, until they revealed unto him their finest songs,--I also took to my arms, the steel-pen, and saying good-bye to the old folios which had been the sources of all these visionary fancies, I betook myself to the ground which had once been trodden by the Duchess Hadwig, and her contemporaries. There, I sat in the venerable library of St. Gallus; took long rows in little rocking boats over the Bodensee; found a nest for myself under the old linden-tree at the foot of the Hohentwiel, where a worthy old Suabian bailiff has at present charge of the ruins of the ancient fortress, and finally climbed the airy Alpine heights of the Säntis, where the "_Wildkirchlein_" hangs like an eagle's nest over the green valley of Appenzell. There, in the wards of the "_Suabian Sea_," mind and soul filled with the life of bygone generations; the heart refreshed by warm sunshine and balmy mountain air, I first sketched and then completed the greater part of this story.