glisten.  It was so intensely bright that one could have looked within, and as I closed my eyes the light entered my soul and therein everything seemed to shed brilliancy and perfume, to sing and to ring.  It seemed to me a new life had commenced in myself and that I was another being, and when I asked my mother what it meant, she replied it was an Easter song they were singing in the church.  What bright, holy song it was, which at that time surged through my soul, I have never been able to discover.  It must have been an old church hymn, like those which many a time stirred the rugged soul of our Luther.  I never heard it again, but many a time even now when I hear an adagio of Beethoven’s, or a psalm of Marcellus, or a chorus of Handel’s, or a simple song in the Scotch Highlands or the Tyrol, it seems to me as if the lofty church windows again glistened and the organ-tones once more surged through my soul, and a new world revealed itself—­more beautiful than the starry heavens and the violet perfume.

These things I remember in my earliest childhood, and intermingled with them are my dear mother’s looks, the calm, earnest gaze of my father, gardens and vine leaves, and soft green turf, and a very old and quaint picture-book—­and this is all I can recall of the first scattered leaves of my childhood.

Afterwards it grows brighter and clearer.  Names and faces appear—­not only father and mother, but brothers and sisters, friends and teachers, and a multitude of strange people.  Ah! yes, of these strange people there is so much recorded in memory.

SECOND MEMORY.

Not far from our house, and opposite the old church with the golden cross, stood a large building, even larger than the church, and having many towers.  They looked exceedingly gray and old and had no golden cross, but stone eagles tipped the summits and a great white and blue banner fluttered from the highest tower, directly over the lofty doorway at the top of the steps, where, on either side, two mounted soldiers stood sentinels.  The building had many windows, and behind the windows you could distinguish red-silk curtains with golden tassels.  Old lindens encircled the grounds, which, in summer, overshadowed the gray masonry with their green leaves and bestrewed the turf with their fragrant white blossoms.  I had often looked in there, and at evening when the lindens exhaled their perfumes and the windows were illuminated, I saw many figures pass and repass like shadows.  Music swept down from on high, and carriages drove up, from which ladies and gentlemen alighted and ascended the stairs.  They all looked so beautiful and good!  The gentlemen had stars upon their breasts, and the ladies wore fresh flowers in their hair; and I often thought,—­Why do I not go there too?

One day my father took me by the hand and said:  “We are going to the castle; but you must be very polite if the Princess speaks to you, and kiss her hand.”