It was evening.  I stood on the heights of Trollhaetta’s old sluices, and saw the ships with outspread sails glide away through the meadows like spectres, large and white.  The sluice gates were opened with a ponderous and crashing sound, like that related of the copper gates of the secret council in Germany.  The evening was so still that Trollhaetta’s Fall was as audible in the deep stillness, as if it were a chorus from a hundred water-mills—­ever one and the same tone.  In one, however, there sounded a mightier crash that seemed to pass sheer through the earth; and yet with all this the endless silence of nature was felt.  Suddenly a large bird flew out from the trees, far in the forest, down towards the Falls.  Was it the mountain sprite?—­We will imagine so, for it is the most interesting fancy.

THE BIRD PHOENIX.

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In the garden of Paradise, under the tree of knowledge, stood a hedge of roses.  In the first rose a bird was hatched; its flight was like that of light, its colours beautiful, its song magnificent.

But when Eve plucked the fruit of knowledge, when she and Adam were driven from the garden of Paradise, a spark from the avenging angel’s flaming sword fell into the bird’s nest and kindled it.  The bird died in the flames, but from the red egg there flew a new one—­the only one—­the ever only bird Phoenix.  The legend states that it takes up its abode in Arabia; that every hundred years it burns itself up in its nest, and that a new Phoenix, the only one in the world, flies out from the red egg.

The bird hovers around us, rapid as the light, beautiful in colour, glorious in song.  When the mother sits by the child’s cradle, it is by the pillow, and with its wings flutters a glory around the child’s head.  It flies through the chamber of contentment, and there is the sun’s radiance within:—­the poor chest of drawers is odoriferous with violets.

But the bird Phoenix is not alone Arabia’s bird:  it flutters in the rays of the Northern Lights on Lapland’s icy plains; it hops amongst the yellow flowers in Greenland’s short summer.  Under Fahlun’s copper rocks, in England’s coal mines, it flies like a powdered moth over the hymn-book in the pious workman’s hands.  It sails on the lotus-leaf down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eyes of the Hindoo girl glisten on seeing it.

The bird Phoenix!  Dost thou not know it?  The bird of Paradise, song’s sacred swan!  It sat on the car of Thespis, like a croaking raven, and flapped its black, dregs-besmeared wings; over Iceland’s minstrel-harp glided the swan’s red, sounding bill.  It sat on Shakspeare’s shoulder like Odin’s raven, and whispered in his ear:  “Immortality!” It flew at the minstrel competition, through Wartzburg’s knightly halls.

The bird Phoenix!  Dost thou not know it?  It sang the Marseillaise for thee, and thou didst kiss the plume that fell from its wing:  it came in the lustre of Paradise, and thou perhaps didst turn thyself away to some poor sparrow that sat with merest tinsel on its wings.