And now, then, become visible, little peaceful Hesperus--Thou needest a little cloud to veil thee, and a little year, in order to have completed thy orbit!—Mayest thou stand nearer to Truth and Virtue, as thy image in heaven does to the sun, than the earth into which thou shinest does to either of the three; and mayest thou, like that star, never withdraw thyself from the sight of men, except by hiding thyself in the sun! May thy influence be fairer, warmer, and surer than that of the Almanac-Hesperus, which superstition places on the misty throne of _this_ year!--Thou wouldst make me happy a second time if thou shouldst be an _Evening-Star_ to some withered mortal, and to some blooming one a _morning star_. Sink with the former and rise with the latter; glow in the evening sky of the first between his clouds, and overspread his past life-road up the mountain with a soft lustre, that he may recognize again the far-off flowers of youth; and rejuvenate his antiquated recollections into hopes!--Cool off the fresh youth in the early hours of life, as a tranquillizing morning star, ere the sun falls hot upon him and the whirl of day sets in!--But for me, Hesperus, thou art now well set; thou hast hitherto journeyed on beside the earth, as my companion-planet, as my second world, on which my soul disembarked as it left the body to the buffetings of earth; but to day my eye falls sadly and slowly off from thee and thy white flower-bed, which I planted around thy coasts, down upon the damp, cold ground where I stand, and I see how we are all encompassed with coolness and evening, torn far away from the stars, amused with glowworms, disquieted with _ignes fatui_, all veiled from each other, every one alone, and feeling his own life only through the warm, throbbing hand of a friend, which he holds in the dark.---- Yes, there will indeed come another age, when it will be light, and when man will awake out of sublime dreams and find--the dreams again, because he has lost nothing but sleep.-- The stones and rocks, which two veiled shapes, Necessity and Sin, like Deucalion and Pyrrha, throw behind them at the good, shall become new men.-- And on the western gate of this century stands written: Here is the road to Virtue and Wisdom; just as on the western gate of Cherson[10] stood the sublime inscription: Here leads the way to Byzantium.---- Infinite Providence, thou wilt make the day dawn.-- But still struggles the twelfth hour of the night; nocturnal birds of prey shoot through the darkness; spectres rattle; the dead play their antics; the living dream. JEAN PAUL. In the _Vernal Equinox_, 1794. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 1. DOG-POST-DAY. Difference between the 1st and 4th of May.--Rat-Battle-Pieces.-- Nocturne.--Three Regiments in future Breeches.--Couching-Needle.--Overture and Secret Instructions of the Book.