5. Plutarch affirms that "souls are naturally endowed with the faculty of prediction, and the chief cause that excites this faculty and virtue is a certain temperature of air and winds." My anchorite thought it "sad that atmospheric influences should bring to our dust the communion of the soul with the Infinite." But I am glad that the atmosphere should be an excitant, glad to find the dull rock itself to be deluged with Deity,--to be theist, Christian, poetic. The fine influences of the morning few can explain, but all will admit. Goethe acknowledges them in the poem in which he dislodges the nightingale from her place as Leader of the Muses. MUSAGETES. "Often in deep midnights I called on the sweet muses. No dawn shines, And no day will appear: But at the right hour The lamp brings me pious light, That it, instead of Aurora or Phœbus, May enliven my quiet industry. But they left me lying in sleep Dull, and not to be enlivened, And after every late morning Followed unprofitable days. "When now the Spring stirred, I said to the nightingales: 'Dear nightingales, trill Early, O, early before my lattice, Wake me out of the deep sleep Which mightily chains the young man.' But the love-filled singers Poured by night before my window Their sweet melodies,-- Kept awake my dear soul, Roused tender new longings In my lately touched bosom, And so the night passed, And Aurora found me sleeping; Yea, hardly did the sun wake me. At last it has become summer, And at the first glimpse of morning The busy early fly stings me Out of my sweet slumber. Unmerciful she returns again: When often the half-awake victim Impatiently drives her off, She calls hither the unscrupulous sisters. And from my eyelids Sweet sleep must depart. Vigorous, I spring from my couch, Seek the beloved Muses, Find them in the beech grove, Pleased to receive me; And I thank the annoying insect For many a golden hour. Stand, then, for me, ye tormenting creatures, Highly praised by the poet As the true Musagetes."