and faith; it is natural and spontaneous love, thwarted by convention and circumstance; it is condemnation before men, and forgiveness before God; it is the ideal and the worldly; it is an epitome of human life,—­love, joy, sorrow, sin,—­birth, life, death, and the sure hope of resurrection.  How pregnant with expression was it to a mind like Scheffer’s, where the intellectual, the affectional, and the spiritual natures were so nicely blended!  He first painted “Margaret at her Wheel,” in 1831,—­accompanied by a “Faust tormented by Doubt.”  These were two simple heads, each by itself, like a portrait, but with all the fine perception of character which constitutes an ideal work.  Next he painted “Margaret at Church.”  Here other figures fill up the canvas; but the touching expression of the young girl, whose soul is just beginning to be torn by the yet new joy of her love and the bitter consciousness of her lost innocence, fills the mind of the spectator.  This is the most inspired and the most touching of all the pictures; it strikes the key-note of the whole story; it is the meeting of the young girl’s own ideal world of pure thought with the outward world.  The sense of guilt comes from the reflection in the thoughts of those about her; and where all before was peace and love, now come discord and agony;—­she has eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and is already cast out of her paradise.  “Margaret on the Sabbath,” “Margaret going out of Church,” and “Margaret walking in the Garden,” are all charming idyls, but have less expression.  The last picture, painted just before Scheffer’s death, and soon to be engraved, represents “Margaret at the Fountain.”  “It is full of expression, and paints the joy and pain of love still struggling in the young girl’s heart, while conscience begins to make its chiding voice heard.”

The “Mignons” are the best known of all Scheffer’s works of this period.  The youngest one, “Mignon regrettant sa Patrie,” is the most satisfactory in its simple, unconscious expression.  The wonderful child stands in the most natural attitude, absorbed in her own thought, and struggling to recall those dim memories, floating in beauty before her mind, which seem almost to belong to a previous state of existence.  There is less of the weird and fantastic than Goethe has given to her,—­but the central, deep nature is beautifully reproduced.  “Mignon aspirant au Ciel,” although full of spiritual beauty, is a little more constrained; the longing after her heavenly home is less naturally expressed than her childish regret; the pose is a little mannered; and the feeling is more conscious, but less deep.  “Mignon with the Old Harper” is far less interesting; the old man’s head does not express that mixture of inspiration and insanity, the result of a life of love, misery, and wrong, which Goethe has portrayed in this strange character.