He throws over all things a strange and magic coloring. You are startled at the boldness and beauty of his figures and illustrations, which are scattered everywhere with a reckless prodigality; multitudinous, like the blossoms of early summer, and as fragrant and beautiful. With a thousand extravagances are mingled ten thousand beauties of thought and expression, which kindle the reader's imagination, and lead it onward in a bold flight, through the glow of sunrise and sunset, and the dewy coldness and starlight of summer nights. He is difficult to understand, intricate, strange, drawing his illustrations from every by-corner of science, art, and nature, – a comet among the bright stars of German literature. When you read his works, it is as if you were climbing a high mountain, in merry company, to see the sun rise. At times you are enveloped in mist, the morning wind sweeps by you with a shout, you hear the far-off muttering thunders. Wide beneath you spreads the landscape, – field, meadow, town, and winding river. The ringing of distant church-bells, or the sound of solemn village clock, reaches you; then arises the sweet and manifold fragrance of flowers, the birds begin to sing, the vapors roll away, up comes the glorious sun, you revel like a lark in the sunshine and bright blue heaven, and all is a delirious dream of soul and sense, when suddenly a friend at your elbow laughs aloud, and offers you a piece of Bologna sausage. As in real life, so in his writings: the serious and the comic, the sublime and the grotesque, the pathetic and the ludicrous, are mingled together. At times he is sententious, energetic, simple; then, again, obscure and diffuse. His thoughts are like mummies embalmed in spices, and wrapped about with curious envelopments; but within these the thoughts themselves are kings. At times glad, beautiful images, airy forms, move by you, graceful, harmonious; at times the glaring, wild-looking fancies, chained together by hyphens, brackets, and dashes, brave and base, high and low, all in their motley dresses, go sweeping down the dusty page, like the galley-slaves that sweep the streets of Rome, where you may chance to see the nobleman and the peasant manacled together.«

Flemming smiled at the German's warmth, to which the presence of the lady and the Laubenheimer wine seemed each to have contributed something, and then said: –

»Better an outlaw than not free! – These are his own words. And thus he changes at his will. Like the God Thor, of the old Northern mythology, he now holds forth the seven stars in the bright heaven above us, and now hides himself in clouds, and pounds away with his great hammer.«

»And yet this is not affectation in him,« rejoined the German. »It is his nature, – it is Jean Paul. And the figures and ornaments of his style, wild, fantastic, and ofttimes startling, like those in Gothic cathedrals, are not merely what they seem, but massive coignes and buttresses, which support the fabric. Remove them, and the roof and walls fall in. And through these gargoyles, these wild faces, these images of beasts and men carved upon spouts and gutters, flow out, like gathered rain, the bright, abundant thoughts that have fallen from heaven. And all he does is done with a kind of serious playfulness. He is a sea-monster, disporting himself on the broad ocean; his very sport is earnest; there is something majestic and serious about it. In everything there is strength, a rough good-nature, all sunshine overhead, and underneath the heavy moaning of the sea. Well may he be called ›Jean Paul, the Only-One.‹«

With such discourse the hour of dinner passed; and after dinner Flemming went to the cathedral. They were singing vespers. A beadle, dressed in blue, with a cocked hat and a crimson sash and collar, was strutting, like a turkey, along the aisles. This important gentleman conducted Flemming through the church, and showed him the choir, with its heavy-sculptured stalls of oak, and the beautiful figures in brown stone over the bishops' tombs. He then led him, by a side-door, into the old and ruined cloisters of St. Willigis. Through the low Gothic arches the sunshine streamed upon the pavement of tombstones, whose images and inscriptions are mostly effaced by the footsteps of many generations. There stands the tomb of Frauenlob, the Minnesinger. His face is sculptured on an entablature in the wall; a fine, strongly-marked, and serious countenance.