“The Salamander heeded not the warning of the Spirit-prince:  full of longing ardor he folded the green Snake in his arms; she crumbled into ashes; a winged Being, born from her dust, soared away through the sky.  Then the madness of desperation caught the Salamander, and he ran through the garden, throwing forth fire and flames, and wasted it in his wild fury, till its fairest flowers and blossoms hung down, blackened and scathed, and their lamentation filled the air.  The indignant Prince of the Spirits, in his wrath, laid hold of the Salamander, and said:  ’Thy fire has burnt out, thy flames are extinguished, thy rays darkened; sink down to the Spirits of the Earth; let these mock and jeer thee, and keep thee captive, till the Fire-element shall again kindle and beam up with thee as with a new being from the Earth.’  The poor Salamander sank down extinguished; but now the testy old Earth-spirit, who was Phosphorus’ gardener, came forth and said:  ’Master! who has greater cause to complain of the Salamander than I?  Had not all the fair flowers, which he has burnt, been decorated with my gayest metals; had I not stoutly nursed and tended their seeds, and spent many a fair hue on their leaves?  And yet I must pity the poor Salamander; for it was but love, in which thou, O Master, hast full often been entangled, that drove him to despair and made him desolate the garden.  Remit him the too harsh punishment!’—­’His fire is for the present extinguished,’ said the Prince of the Spirits; ’but in the hapless time, when the Speech of Nature shall no longer be intelligible to degenerate man; when the Spirits of the Elements, banished into their own regions, shall speak to him only from afar, in faint, spent echoes; when, displaced from the harmonious circle, an infinite longing alone shall give him tidings of the Land of Marvels, which he once might inhabit while Faith and Love still dwelt in his soul—­in this hapless time the fire of the Salamander shall again kindle; but only to manhood shall he be permitted to rise, and, entering wholly into man’s necessitous existence, he shall learn to endure its wants and oppressions.  Yet not only shall the remembrance of his first state continue with him, but he shall again rise into the sacred harmony of all Nature; he shall understand its wonders, and the power of his fellow-spirits shall stand at his behest.  Then, too, in a Lily-bush, shall he find the green Snake again, and the fruit of his marriage with her shall be three daughters, which, to men, shall appear in the form of their mother.  In the spring season these shall disport them in the dark Elder-bush, and sound with their lovely crystal voices.  And then if, in that needy and mean age of inward obduracy, there shall be found a youth who understands their song; nay, if one of the little Snakes look at him with her kind eyes; if the look awaken in him forecastings of the distant, wondrous Land, to which, having cast away the burden of the Common, he can