I have sealed up

the fountain securely, not only against myself, but all of the same race. [This is a fountain in the courtyard of Castle Ringstetten, which Undine had caused to be covered up, while she lived upon earth, on account of its affording Kühleborn and other water-spirits who were ill-disposed to the knight, the means of access to the castle.]

"Still, should he leave his castle," said Kühleborn, "or should he once allow the fountain to be uncovered, what then? for doubtless he thinks there is no great murder in such trifles?'

For that very reason," ‚” said Undine, still smiling amid her tears, "for that very reason he is this moment hovering in spirit over the Mediterranean Sea, and dreaming of this voice of warning which our conversation affords him. It is for this that I have been studious in disposing the whole vision.'

Notwithstanding all this, however, Huldbrand weds Bertalda. She in the gayety of her spirit, upon the night of the wedding, causes the fountain to be uncovered, without the knowledge of the knight, who has never revealed his dream to her. She does this, partly on account of a fancied virtue in the water, and partly through an arrogant pleasure in undoing what the first wife had commanded to be done. Undine immediately ascends and accomplishes the destruction of the knight.

This is an exceedingly meagre outline of the leading event of the story; which, although brief, is crowded with incident. Beneath all, there runs a mystic or under current of meaning, of the simplest and most easily intelligible, yet of the most richly philosophical character. From internal evidence afforded by the book itself, we gather that the author has deeply suf

fered from the ills of an ill-assorted marriage—and to the bitter reflections induced by these ills, we owe the conception and peculiar execution of “ Undine.”

In contrast between the artless, thoughtless, and careless character of Undine before possessing a soul, and her serious, enwrapped, and anxious yet happy condition after possessing it – a condition which with all its multiform cares and disquietudes, she still feels to be preferable to her original fate — M. Fouqué has beautifully painted the difference between the heart unused to love, and the heart which has received its inspiration.

The jealousies which follow the marriage, arising from the conduct of Bertalda, are the natural troubles of love - but the precautions of Kühleborn and the other water-spirits, who take umbrage at Huldbrand's treatment of his wife, are meant to picture certain difficulties from the interference of relations in conjugal matters - difficulties which the author has himself experienced. The warning of Undine to Huldbrand "reproach me not upon the waters, or we part for ever is meant to embody the truth that quarrels between man and wife are seldom or never irremediable unless when taking place in the presence of third parties. The second wedding of the knight, with his gradual forgetfulness of Undine and Undine's intense grief beneath the waters, are dwelt upon so pathetically and so passionately, that there can be no doubt of the personal opinions of the author on the subject of such marriages no doubt of his deep personal interest in the question. How thrillingly are these few and simple words made to convey his belief that the mere death of a beloved wife does not imply a final separation so complete as to justify an union with another: "The fisherman had loved Undine with exceeding tenderness,

and it was a doubtful conclusion to his mind, that the mere disappearance of his beloved child could be properly viewed as her death!" This is where the old man is endeavouring to dissuade the knight from wedding Bertalda.

We have no hesitation in saying that this portion of the design of the romance - the portion which conveys an undercurrent of meaning - does not afford the fairest field to the romanticist does not appertain to the higher regions of ideality. Although, in this case, the plan is essentially distinct from Allegory, yet it has too close an affinity to that most indefensible species of writing a species whose gross demerits we cannot now pause to examine. That M. Fouqué was well aware of the disadvantage under which he laboured that he well knew the field he traversed not to be the fairest — and that a personal object alone induced him to choose it- we cannot and shall not doubt. For the hand of the master is visible in every line of his beautiful fable. "Undine" is a model of models, in regard to the high artistical talent which it evinces. We could write volumes in a detailed commentary upon its various beauties in this respect. Its unity is absolute-its keeping unbroken. Yet every minute point of the picture fills and satisfies the eye. Everything is attended to, and nothing is out of time or out of place.

We say that some private and personal design to be fulfilled has thrown M. Fouqué upon that objectionable undercurrent of meaning which he has so elaborately managed. Yet his high genius has nearly succeeded in turning the blemish into a beauty. At all events he has succeeded, in spite of a radical defect, in producing what we advisedly consider the finest romance

in existence.

We say this with a bitter kind of halfconsciousness that only a very few will fully agree with us yet these few are our all in such matters. They will stand by us in a just opinion.

Were we to pick out points for admiration in "Undine," we should pick out the greater portion of the story. We cannot say whether the novelty of its conception, or the loftiness of its ideality, or its intense pathos, or its rigorous simplicity, or that high artistical talent with which all are combined, is the particular to be chiefly admired. Addressing those who have read the book, we may call attention to the delicacy and grace of transition from subject to subject a point which never fails to test the power of the writer — as, for example, at page 128, when, for the purposes of the story, it becomes necessary that the knight, with Undine and Bertalda, shall proceed down the Danube. An ordinary novelist would have here tormented both himself and his readers, in his search for a sufficient motive for the voyage. But, in connexion with a fable such as " Undine" how all-sufficient seems the simple motive assigned by Fouqué! In this grateful union of "In friendship and affection winter came and passed away; and spring with its foliage and tender green, and its heaven of softest blue, succeeded to gladden the hearts of the three inmates of the castle. The season was in harmony with their minds, and their minds imparted their own hues to the season. What wonder, then, that its storks and swallows inspired them also with a disposition to travel!"

Again, we might dwell upon the exquisite management of imagination, which is so visible in the passages where the brooks are water-spirits, and the water-spirits brooks - neither distinctly either. What can be more

ethereally ideal than the frequent indeterminate glimpses caught of Kühleborn or than his singular and wild lapses into shower and foam ? — or than the evanishing of the white wagoner and his white horses into the shrieking and devouring flood?-or than the gentle melting of the passionately weeping bride into the chrystal waters of the Danube? What can be more divine than the character of the soulless Undine ? what more august than her transition into the soulpossessing wife? What can be more intensely beautiful than the whole book? We calmly think — yet cannot help asserting with enthusiasm that the whole wide range of fictitious literature embraces nothing comparable in loftiness of conception, or in felicity of execution, to those final passages of the volume before us which embody the uplifting of the stone from the fount by the order of Bertalda, the sorrowful and silent readvent of Undine, and the rapturous death of Sir Huldbrand in the embraces of his spiritual wife.

HYPERION: A ROMANCE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "OutreMER. TWO VOLUMES. SAMUEL COLMAN, New YORK.

[Text: Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, October, 1839.]

WERE it possible to throw into a bag the lofty thought and manner of the "Pilgrims of the Rhine," together with the quirks and quibbles and true humour of "Tristram Shandy," not forgetting a few of the heartier drolleries of Rabelais, and one or two of the Phantasy Pieces of the Lorrainean Callôt, the whole, when well shaken up, and thrown out, would be a very tolerable