Chamisso's share in the voyage is recorded in the third volume of the account of it published at Weimar in 1821, and does honour to his spirit of careful observation and his accuracy. Like Darwin after him, Chamisso has related his experiences interspersed with scientific observations. He now again fixed his residence at Berlin, from which University he received the degree of Doctor in Philosophy. An appointment at the Botanic Gardens allowed him full liberty to follow up his favourite pursuit of Natural History, and bound him by still stronger ties to his second fatherland. He soon married Antonie Piaste, a relation of Hitzig. Chamisso then wrote an account of the principal plants of the north of Germany, with views respecting the vegetable kingdom, and science of Botany; this work appeared at Berlin in 1827. Poetry, however, had still some share of his attention; and he continued, during the latter years of his life, to maintain his claims to an honourable place among the poets of Germany. In 1829 he published his famous work "Salas y Gomez." Several of his ballads and romances rank with the most distinguished of modern times in this branch of composition. With regard to the story before us, the narrative of Peter Schlemihl, it is in any case very original. At once comic and tragic, grotesque and terrible, it is full of gaiety and emotion, and the supernatural, phantastic and absurd are skillfully mixed with natural and real elements. From the world which we inhabit the author leads us into the realm of mystery--and yet, while we experience sensations of the marvellous, we do not seem to leave the world of reality. And herein lies the difference between Peter Schlemihl and other tales of the period. In Tieck and Arnim the fairy and real worlds are opposed and hostile to each other, in Fouqué's _Undine_ these elements are reconciled, but the events are laid in the middle-ages, when people believed in fairies. Chamisso, however, wields into one the supernatural and the real and writes a fable in accordance with modern civilization! Of course, Chamisso cannot be compared with Ariosto and The Thousand and One Nights,--where we find logic even in the domain of the impossible. Chamisso, it must further be pointed out, while possessing all the qualities of the Romanticists, is free from their obscurities. His nationally dual nature and his peculiar poetic gifts enabled him to give expression in poetry to the variegated manifestations of science and of art. He contributed greatly to the unification of the national German and foreign elements, and was one of the most useful and productive workers in the lovely garden of fairy tales. Surrounded by a circle of admiring friends, Chamisso continued his literary work until his death in 1839. A. S. RAPPOPORT. Berck-Plage, September, 1913. FOOTNOTE TO THE INTRODUCTION: