The Englishman.--Meadow-Ball.--Blissful Night.--The Blooming Cave. With men, as with misers, it never strikes anything but quarters of the happy hour; like a bad clock, it never strikes full the Arcadian hour of our hope. But in respect to the Whitsuntide days this is utterly false,--they are magnificent, and as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was formerly represented in the old churches by the flinging down of flowers, so do we shadow forth those of Maienthal by throwing out flowers of speech. I have therefore actually unsealed a flask of Burgundy, and set it beside my inkstand, in order, in the first place, by my greater fire in this chapter, to bring over the critics of art and nature to my side, who would rather break the staff over authors than a lance with authors,--and secondly and simply to drink the wine, which of itself is final object and teleology enough. A true Paradise and kingdom of heaven we should have, if the reader also would himself take something spirituous in such chapters. When the author alone gets drunk, half the impression goes to the d----ogs; and it is a misfortune that the reviewers have nothing to nibble and nothing to drink, else they might minister to me as to a star by refracting me through their _atmosphere_ and show me _higher_ and _broader_ than I stand. Victor had hardly run out into the wet grass of the morning, when he came upon the Englishman with his head under the sprinkling-pots of the water-wheels. He gladly forgave this Cato the elder all his singularities and the idiosyncrasy of his extravagant nature and his comet-course; for he had himself in his eighteenth year been such a hairy star, and so looked upon this man as a comet-medal struck for himself. Although the Briton _affected_ singularity, Victor knew from his own experience that it arose not from vanity, (one can, if one will, extract vanity from all, even the most innocent, actions, as well as _air_ from all bodies,) but it proceeded from humor, for which the enjoyment of an eccentric part, whether we shall _read_ or _play_ it, has full as many charms as it has for the sense of freedom and of inward power. Vain men succumb to the ridiculous, which the whimsical man defies; and the former hate, the latter seek their likenesses. The only thing which Victor had against him was that he would not show others little indulgences, for the simple reason that he never desired any either; and this very war, inseparable from humor, with all the little weaknesses and expectations of men, had given the humane Victor a dislike to this eccentric path. Misfortune, therefore, more easily makes odd men than prosperity.