Christianity, till at length the new religion is firmly seated in the Gothic temples, to the entire exclusion of the ancient objects of adoration.

Then come the Legendary Romances, or Chronicles of the exploits of the Franks, the Longobards, the Burgundians, and the Hunsthe venerable traditions embodied in the Heldenburt and the Niebelingen Lied, which are echoed in the Scandinavian Sagas, and had probably been current, or at least orally familiar, for centuries before the actual date to which we can with certainty refer any of the works now extant. For ourselves, we have no hesitation in believing that we see in them the subjects, at least many of the songs, commemorated by Tacitus, and the "barbara et antiquissima Carmina, quibus veterum regum actus et bella canebantur," which Eginhart mentions Charlemagne to have carefully collected and recorded. Unfortunately the bigotry of his son and successor, Lewis, was powerfully exercised in the destruction of these precious relics, and what is left owes not its preservation to the patronage of kings and emperors. people, moreover, retained their love for their native tongue; they sung of woods and wilds, of heroes, and war, and conquest, so that,

Yet fragments of the lofty strain
Float down the stream of years,
As buoyant on the stormy main
A parted wreck appears.

The

The church was more politic than Lewis, and endeavoured to turn the taste for song to pious uses, by enlisting it in the service of the Christian faith. With this design Ottfried founded the new school of Rhyming Legends and Contes Devots.

Among the most venerable remains of ancient Teutonic literature, we should rank the abundant stores of popular legends and traditions, which often preserve most curious illustrations of heathen mythology, and still more frequently exhibit it in a most incongruous combination with the Christian faith.

Under this last head we may also notice the beautiful collection of Nursery Literature (chiefly consisting of Fairy Tales) which has lately been edited with so much care by Messrs. Grimm. These, too, have attracted great attention: though we have long left our nurseries, we retain our best relish for these tales, and hardly know whether to admire most their interest as works of fiction, or their literary value as bearing on ancient mythos and superstition.

The Germans are by no means deficient in the genuine class of Chivalric Romances, which has nearly the same general features in every country. Those, however, which are of purely Teutonic origin, are not the least interesting; and the style in which they are written, and the character of their incidents and machinery, will often perplex the theories of the various controversialists on the rival systems concerning the sources of romantic fiction and embellishment.

The Troubadour age of German poetry, the reign of the " Frau Minne" [Lady Love] is usually associated with the last period, although in fact its predecessor. Every feature which is admired as

characteristically beautiful in the Southern Minstrels, is to be recognized in the productions of their northern imitations, during the 12th, 13th, and part of the 14th centuries. The exercise of poetic talent was now in some measure diverted from the exploits of savage heroes and warriors to the cultivation of the domestic affections. Such subjects had interest every where; the poet accordingly became the favourite of all ranks,

And tuned to please a peasant's ear,

The harp a king had deign'd to hear.

This may truly be styled the splendid age of Teutonic poetry, blending the narrative interest of the Trouveurs with the more abstract and devotional gallantry of the Spanish and French Troubadours. If the Red Rose of Provence has been cherished and unceasingly cultivated, equal care might and ought to be bestowed on the White Rose of Germany; and we shall with pleasure embrace an opportunity of introducing the Minne-Lieders (of whose productions we have amused ourselves in translating a large store) to take their station by the side of the worthies from the south, whose productions we noticed in a late number.

Thus is exhibited a complete cyclus of ancient indigenous literature, singularly various and characteristic of the progress of a people through all its stages of civilization, and marking most of the impressions which the events and institutions of the middle ages successively imparted.

To all this succeeded (with the accession of the house of Hapsburgh) a long period of indolence or perverted industry, which may, however, have had its use in preserving many of the remains of higher antiquity, to which a more modern and popular literature would probably have become a dangerous rival.

We must, however, hasten to recur to the subject with which we opened these remarks, and in which we intended principally to bear our testimony in favour of the popular legends or "volks sagen," of which the store is (thanks to the industry of our German friends) now so abundant. None rank higher in our estimation than those which have been handed down from the remotest antiquity among the inhabitants of the mountainous wilds of the Hartz Forest. We need hardly observe how peculiarly these picturesque regions are adapted to the growth of those airy fabrics of the fancy. Such spots have always been the fairy-land of the imagination. Where Nature assumes her wildest and sublimest features, there also has the genius of man ever expanded its boldest conceptions. Even his superstitions bear an elevated character, and the phantoms of his brain are of noble port, "Like ghaist of Fian brim

That stride frae craig to cleugh, hung round
Wi' gloamin vapors dim."

These tales have been collected and illustrated by more than one careful hand, but more particularly by Otman; and we shall make no apology for presenting to the notice of our readers one of these wildflowers, which Geoffrey Crayon has with merciless hand taken from its native soil, and transplanted without acknowledgment into the

more cultivated parterre of his sketch-book, under the title of " Rip van Winkle."

THE GOATHERD.

Peter Claus, a goatherd of Sittenburg, who tended his flock on the Kyffhaus mountain, used to drive it every evening to a wild spot, surrounded by a ruined wall, where he numbered his charge and left it to rest for the night.

For some days he had observed that one of his prettiest kids vanished soon after she arrived at this place, and appeared last of all the herd in the morning. He watched her more closely, and saw that she escaped through a cleft in the wall. He followed her into a cavern, and found her busily engaged in picking up and eating the oat-kernels which fell in continual showers from the roof. He looked upwards, the corn rattled about his head, but with all his curiosity the darkness prevented his discovering any thing more. He listened, and at length heard the neighing and stamping of a high-bred horse, from whose manger he now guessed that the oats fell.

The goatherd stood fixed in astonishment. Whence could this horse have found its way through the almost trackless mountains that surrounded him? Presently appeared a dwarf who made signs to him to follow. Peter entered the cave, and passed first into a court surrounded by high walls, and thence to a valley embosomed in lofty ridges of rock, and overshadowed by thick foliage, through which only a scanty twilight made its way. Here on the cool plat of turf were twelve knights of grave deportment, who interchanged not a single word, but busied themselves in playing at nine pins. Peter was ordered by signs to employ himself in fetching the bowl.

At first his heart quaked, and his knees trembled as he stole a sidelong glance at the long beards and slashed doublets of the venerable knights. By degrees he became bolder, he snatched hasty glances around him, and at length became hardy enough to drink from a can that stood near him, whence arose the fragrant perfume of generous wine. New life seemed to inspire his frame, and as often as fatigue appeared inclined to return, he drew fresh vigour from the ever-flowing can. Sleep at last overcame him.

At his awakening he found himself once more on the wild spot, surrounded by the ruined wall, where his flock was wont to rest. He rubbed his eyes, but neither dog nor goat could he discover, and over him hung shrubs and trees which he had never remarked till this day. He shook his head, and pursued his way over hills and dales where his goats were used to wander during the day, but no where was there any trace of them. Below him lay Sittendorf, and at last he rushed with hasty steps down the hill to inquire after his flock.

The people who met him on the way to the village seemed to be all strangers; they were differently clad, and did not speak as his old neighbours did. They stared at him too when he asked after his goats, and stroked their chins. At last he involuntarily did the same, and found to his astonishment that his beard was at least a good foot long. He now began to think himself and all the world around him bewitched; and yet he was sure that the mountain he was de

scending was the Kyffhaus, and all the cottages with the gardens and grass-plats were quite familiar to him. Some children too, in answer to the question of a traveller riding by, called the village Sittendorf.

Again he shook his head, and made his way through the village to his own hut. It looked sorely decayed; and before it lay a strange child in a ragged frock, by the side of a half-starved hound, who snarled between his teeth while his old master called him by his name. He went through the opening, which a door had once closed, into the hut, and found all there so desolate and ruinous that he reeled like a drunken man out at the back-door, and called for his wife and children, but no one heard him, and no voice answered.

A crowd of women and children soon collected to look at the strange man with the long iron-grey beard, and all beset him with the question, "Whom did he want?" To have to ask others for his own house and wife and children, and perhaps for himself too, seemed so strange, that to get rid of their enquiries he named the first person that occurred to him,-"Kurt Steffew!" said he. Most held their tongues and stared at him, but at last an aged woman said, "He has lived for these twelve years beyond Saxonberg; you will not reach him today." Velten Meier, then !"—" God bless him!" said an old grandmother on crutches, "he has been bed-ridden and never left the house these fifteen years.'

Claus began now to recognise some of his old neighbours, though they appeared to have aged very suddenly, but his appetite for asking any more questions was gone. And now a young woman, who seemed the image of his wife, made her way, bustling through the gaping crowd, with a child in her arms. "What is your name?" said he, starting. "Mary."—" And your father's?"-"God bless him, Peter Claus! It is now twenty years ago since we sought him day and night on the Kyffhaus mountain. His flock came back without him. I was then seven years old."

The Goatherd could contain himself no longer. "I am Peter Claus," said he, "and no other!" as he seized the child from his daughter's arm, and kissed it. All stood petrified with astonishment, till first one voice, and then another, cried "Yes, it is Peter Claus ! Welcome neighbour, welcome home, after twenty years absence!"

The originality and simplicity of these tales recommend them strongly to our notice, but we are inclined to go further, and to assign to many of them a higher literary value, as almost the only records of ancient manners and opinions, and as furnishing very often important historic information. Many of them strongly and accurately characterize a period when religion was just assuming her empire over barbaric tribes; when despotism, as far as it could extend its rule, was pitiless, and curbed by no checks except those it received from a proud spirit of lawless independence, which drove individuals to defy attack in the impregnable fortifications of rocks and precipices. They afford frequent and valuable glimpses of truth to the enquirer

after the remains of the mythology of our heathen ancestors; and we can see no reason why the Thracian or Italian traditions which Homer or Livy occasionally embody, should be valued and, as it were, consecrated in classic memory, while these relics of a corresponding æra of expiring barbarism should be neglected or despised.

It is usually said, that the Teutonic and Scandinavian Sagas are peculiarly sombre-that they tell only

"Of forests and enchantments drear."

Their colouring is certainly deep, but we doubt whether there is any thing more in this than always belongs to such a stage of society, and whether the same features have not characterized the traditions of all countries and ages similarly circumstanced.

In regions overspread with dark and gloomy forests, scarcely penetrable by the light of heaven-where yawning precipices and towering crags are filled with the caves of wild beasts and freebooters-can society, (so far as it exists) its institutions, or literature, be expected to be of a different cast?

Where, on the contrary, the face of heaven smiles, and cultivation teems; where splendid cities rise, and the heart of man is light and secure from danger, the character of popular literature is widely different; but this state is one of progression, arrived at only by long and painful steps.

It is not Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland, or Ireland alone, where woods and mountains have been peopled with goblins and plunderers, with mischievous dwarfs and lordly giants. Greece and Italy had their day too of darkness, and were once the scenes of terror and lawless aggression on the part of the strong, and these gave birth to such legends as those of the Minotaur, Fauns, Giants, Centaurs, Medea, Pelops, and Circe, of the thief-taking Hercules, of Harpies, of Pan, Cacus, and a hundred other worthies of very similar propensities to those which characterize the spirits of the Hartz forest. The bears, the wolves, and the banditti, have, however, long since vanished from the wilds of the North, and this alteration in the face of nature and society, soon produced the same effect as similar revolutions in the South. When the rays of the sun began to penetrate their mountain shades, a milder spirit soon illumined the productions of their imagination, and in the tales of this advanced period, the Goatherd drives his flock in security, he roams in freedom over his native mountains, with only now and then a special interposition of satanic or goblin inAuence to disturb his pursuits, or bewilder his imagination.

T.