Johann Karl August Musäus

“ Even the sober Times, knowing the taste of the public, occasionally indulges in the wonderful, and devotes a few columns to the last travels of the sea-serpent. The propensity for the supernatural is deeply imbedded in our souls. The human mind is not always satisfied with the real; its boundless activity passes from realities into the domain of hypothetic possibilities. Thus each nation has its fancy stories, which, if they form not part of its literature, are at least traditional in the mouths of the million ”

“ Whatever the learned doctors may say, Fancy is the dearest boon-companion of the human mind, from the first developement of the soul in its infantine shell till the blight of its energies in the shrivelled-up body of old age. ”

“ Handsome Fred was delighted with this well-conceived plan, and clapped his hands with joy. Although at the time of the thirty years war, free-thinkers were as yet rather scarce, the young warrior was however enough of a philosopher, if not to doubt altogether the existence of ghosts, at least to make it no concern of his to trouble his head about them. ”

“ It is a thoroughly mistaken idea, to believe that Fancy Tales are drolleries invented only to lull children asleep, and not fit to entertain the more enlightened public. The mind, as well as the stomach, requires variety and change, to prevent satiety and disgust. The plodding merchant, the calculating politician, the subtle lawyer, the serious judge, the problem-crammed mathematician, and even the dogmatic divine, need an occasional relaxation of the mind, which they find in light literature. ”

“ He took his way through the Voigtland, and when he saw the castle of Lauenstein at a distance, his heart began to beat quicker, from doubt and fear if his beloved had remained faithful to him. He announced himself as an old friend of the family, without making himself known, and the doors were thrown open to him, according to the custom of hospitality. Alas! how was Emily frightened when the handsome Fred, whom she believed faithless, entered the room. Joy and anger besieged at the same time her soul ”

“ But as the young warrior had found his bride determined to take any road that would lead them straight to the realization of their wishes, he proposed an elopement,—the safest invention of love, which has so many times succeeded, and will yet succeed, in spoiling the plans of parents and in overcoming their obstinacy. The young lady considered for a moment, but at last consented. There was yet, however, one thing to be considered, that was how she could make her exit from the well-bastioned and circumvallated castle, in order to throw herself into the arms of the welcome robber ”

“ During the movements of the thirty years war, the army of the brave Wallenstein took up its winter quarters in the Voigtland, and squire Sigmund received many uninvited guests, who did more mischief in the castle than did formerly the ghostly night-walkers. Although they had a lesser claim to the ownership, they were not to be driven away by exorcisms. The lords of the manor were compelled to put on a good face to a bad case; and as the commanding officers maintained good discipline, they treated them splendidly, in order to keep them good temper. ”

“ As the young lady grew up, and displayed more and more her beauty and wit, the pretensions and hopes of the mother to revive again the splendour of the expiring race rose in proportion. This lady possessed a quiet pride, which in common intercourse was not to be perceived, unless by her high respect to the family pedigree, which she considered the greatest ornament of the house. In the whole country there was, with the exception of the lords of Reuss, no family which she considered noble and ancient enough to transplant upon it the last flower of the Lauenstein tree ”

“ Inventive love, however, conquers all difficulties. It was well known to Emily that All Souls day, in the next autumn, was the time when, according to old tradition, the ghostly nun was after the lapse of seven years to make again her apparition in the castle; she also knew the fear in which all the inmates stood of her, therefore she projected the plan to play this time the part of the spirit-nun herself, to procure secretly a nun’s dress, and to escape thus incognito. ”

“ It may be pleasant sometimes to weep over the misfortunes of a tender and sentimental hero, like Grandison, Werther, or La Nouvelle Heloise; but the continual sight of misfortunes of the heart will, it is to be feared, have the effect of over-exciting or of blunting the feelings. ”

“ It is, however, a custom in the above town, that whenever a storm arises, twelve citizens mount their horses, and ride in solemn procession through the town, intonating a hymn of repentance, to charm away the wind. As soon as the twelve mounted and spurred apostles went out to silence the hurricane, its howling voice became dumb, and the ghost was no more seen. ”

“ His image was always hovering around her, and, above all, the god of dreams seemed to be his special patron; for the innumerable dreams of the young lady during his absence invariably tended to defend and exculpate him. ”

“ The child, whether brought up at the road-side cottage or in the castellated mansion, will abandon its dearest plaything—the hoop, the top, the wooden horse, the doll, or the drum—to come and listen to the story of Jack the Giant-killer or Mother Hubbard. ”

“ This is what Musæus has done in Germany, and which has made his name as immortal as the language.
In popular fancy tales the national character can be as easily traced as in the mechanical works of art of a nation. Thus, richness of invention, luxuriance, and surfeit in strange decorations, distinguish the Eastern fabrics as well as the Eastern tales. Carelessness in elaborating, lightness and shallowness in the fundamental parts, with a certain ease and grace, are to be traced in the French manufactures, as well as in their Contes des Fées. ”

“ She believed herself to have been misled by that error, and to have mistaken the place of appointment; she therefore crossed all the alleys of the grove from the first to the last, but her knight with his carriage and four was nowhere to be seen. She was greatly discomfited at this aceident, and did not know what to make of it. Not to appear at a given rendezvous, is in itself a great crime among lovers ”

“ At the latter end of his life he had purchased a country-seat on the Altenberg, near Weimar, which the Duchess Amelia of Saxe Weimar, the great patroness of authors, and herself a poet, had furnished for him. ”

“ But the most powerful benedictions, which in other cases would have made the whole satanic brood tremble, and even the sprinkling-bush saturated with holy water, which usually makes as much havoc among evil spirits as the fly-flap among domestic flies, were for a long time unavailing against the obstinacy of these spectral Amazons, who defended their rights and claims upon the soil of their former property so firmly, that the exorcisers themselves were sometimes compelled to take to their heels with their sacred relics. ”

“ But not those primitive minds alone are fond of the wonderful and preternatural; for many a debating senator, and grey-headed savant, will peruse with pleasure works upon animal magnetism and other wonderful inventions of the age ”

“ He also published “The Gardener’s Daughter,” a comic opera; “The Four Degrees of Human Age,” a prelude, with music; besides several satires, poems, and critical essays. He commenced a new collection of Tales, under the title of “Ostrich Feathers,” when, after the publication of the first volume, he suddenly died, October the 28th, 1787, at the age of fifty-two, of a disease which is very rare,—the polypus of the heart. ”