But perhaps, gentle reader, thou art one of those, who think the days of Romance gone forever. Believe it not! O, believe it not! Thou hast at this moment in thy heart as sweet a romance as was ever written. Thou art not less a woman, because thou dost not sit aloft in a tower, with a tassel-gentle on thy wrist! Thou art not less a man, because thou wearest no hauberk, nor mail-sark, and goest not on horseback after foolish adventures! Nay, nay! Every one has a Romance in his own heart. All that has blessed or awed the world lies there; and "The oracle within him, that which lives, He must invoke and question,--not dead books, Not ordinances, not mould-rotten papers." Sooner or later some passages of every one's romance must be written, either in words or actions. They will proclaim the truth; for Truth is thought, which has assumed its appropriate garments, either of words or actions; while Falsehood is thought, which, disguised in words or actions not its own, comes before the blind old world, as Jacob came before the patriarch Isaac, clothed in the goodly raiment of his brother Esau. And the world, like the patriarch, is often deceived; for, though the voice is Jacob's voice, yet the hands are the hands of Esau, and the False takes away the birth-right and the blessing from the True. Hence it is, that the world so often lifts up its voice and weeps. That very pleasing and fanciful Chinese Romance, the Shadow in the Water, ends with the hero's marrying both the heroines. I hope my gentle reader feels curious to know the end of this Romance, which is a shadow upon the earth; and see whether there be any marriage at all in it. That is the very point I am now thinking of, as I sit here at my pleasant chamber window, and enjoy the balmy air of a bright summer morning, and watch the motions of the golden robin, that sits on its swinging nest on the outermost, pendulous branch of yonder elm. The broad meadows and the steel-blue river remind me of the meadows of Unterseen, and the river Aar; and beyond them rise magnificent snow-white clouds, piled up like Alps. Thus the shades of Washington and William Tell seem to walk together on these Elysian Fields; for it was here, that in days long gone, our great Patriot dwelt; and yonder clouds so much resemble the snowy Alps, that they remind me irresistibly of the Swiss. Noble examples of a high purpose and a fixed will! Do they not move, Hyperion-like on high? Were they not, likewise, sons of Heaven and Earth?