Hence there could not arise in France so frightful a devil-dom as among us in Germany, and even the witchcraft and sorcery of the former assumed a cheerful guise. How lovely, fair, and picturesque are the popular superstitions of France as compared with the bloody, hazy, and misshapen monsters which loom gloomily and savagely from out the mists of German legendary lore! Those German poets of the middle ages who chose such themes as had originated, or been first treated, in Brittany and Normandy, thereby invested their poems with somewhat of the cheerfulness of the French temperament. But the old Northern sombreness, of whose gloom we can now scarcely form any idea, exercised full sway over such of our literature as was distinctly national, and over such popular traditions as have been orally transmitted. The superstitions of the two countries offer as striking a contrast as that which exists between a Frenchman and a German. The supernatural beings that figure in old French _fabliaux_ and legends are bright and cheerful creations, and remarkable for a cleanliness which is noticeably lacking in our filthy rabble of German hobgoblins. French fairies and sprites are as distinguishable from German spectres as a spruce and daintily-gloved dandy, jauntily promenading the Boulevard Coblence, is different from a burly German porter, carrying a heavy load upon his shoulders. A French nixen, such as a Melusina, is to a German elf as a princess to a washerwoman. The fay Morgana would stand aghast at sight of a German witch, her body naked and besmeared with ointment, riding on a broom-stick to the Brocken. The Brocken is no merry Avalon, but a rendezvous for all that is weird and hideous. On the very summit of the mountain sits Satan, in the shape of a black goat. The infamous sisterhood form a circle around him and dance, and sing, "Donderemus! Donderemus!" Mingled in the infernal din are heard the bleating of the goat and the shouting of the demoniac crew. If, during the dance, a witch happens to drop a shoe, it is an evil omen, and portends that she will be burned at the stake ere the year ends. But all the terror which such a portent inspires is forgotten amid the wild and maddening Berlioz-like music of the witches' sabbath--and when in the morning the poor witch awakens from her delirium, she finds herself lying, stark naked and tired, by the glimmering embers of her hearth.