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fit to live in the higher life, and thereupon, not indeed by any mere fading away, but by one supreme Entschluss, one resolution, made for and by his deeper self, simply transfer himself, in a single glorious moment, to the realm of free spirits? Friedrich persuades himself that this is possible, and decides to give himself just one year to prepare his soul for the final act of faith. He will not go to her in weakness, nor through the door of illness or of violence. In the full glow of health, in the ecstasy of a pure love, he will make himself ready, and then he will pass over in one instant to Sophie’s side. You may be reminded here of the lover in a song which Schubert’s music has rendered so familiar and tear-compelling. I mean the little romanza called “Rosamunde;” save, indeed, that das Ende vom Lied, in case of Novalis, is somewhat different. During this time of mourning he planned his wonderful Hymns to the Night, very brief and mystical rhapsodies in Ossianic prose, interspersed with verse. His diary, however, soon complains that it is a little hard to be quite healthy and still to remain wholly unworldly. One has so many temptations to forgetfulness of lofty ideals. One is, after all, but twenty-six; one loves discussion, friends, philosophy; one plainly has even a good appetite; and alas! this world is so fair, this age in which one lives is so inspiring! Nay, one is not yet quite worthy of the world of free spirits, nor of Sophie. So the days go by; and when the year of the preparation for the great Entschluss is done, not Novalis, but Sophie has passed — this time not merely into the world of spirits, but even into the realm of the pure Platonic Ideas themselves. Novalis still worships her glorified essence, but as for his noble Fichtean self, it continues to surround itself with the sense-facts of the terrestrial order, and now perceives its duty made manifest to its eyes in the person of one Julie Charpentier; for to her Novalis is by this time betrothed after the fashion of the visible world.