And yet, on earth, these men were not happy,—­not all happy, in the outward circumstance of their lives.  They were in want, and in pain, and familiar with prison-bars, and the damp, weeping walls of dungeons!  Oh, I have looked with wonder upon those, who, in sorrow and privation, and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the shadow of death, have worked right on to the accomplishment of their great purposes; toiling much, enduring much, fulfilling much;—­and then, with shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung, have laid themselves down in the grave, and slept the sleep of death,—­and the world talks of them, while they sleep!

It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings had but sanctified them!  As if the death-angel, in passing, had touched them with the hem of his garment, and made them holy!  As if the hand of disease had been stretched out over them only to make the sign of the cross upon their souls!  And as in the sun’s eclipse we can behold the great stars shining in the heavens, so in this life eclipse have these men beheld the lights of the great eternity, burning solemnly and forever!

This was Flemming’s reverie.  It was broken by the voice of the Baron, suddenly exclaiming;

“An angel is flying over the house!—­Here; in this goblet, fragrant as the honey of Hymettus, fragrant as the wild flowers in the Angel’s Meadow, I drink to the divinity of thy dreams.”

“This is all sunshine,” said Flemming, as he drank.  “The wine of the Prince, and the Prince of wines.  By the way, did you ever read that brilliant Italian dithyrambic, Redi’s Bacchus in Tuscany? an ode which seems to have been poured out of the author’s soul, as from a golden pitcher,

`Filled with the wine

Of the vine

Benign,

That flames so red in Sansavine.’

He calls the Montepulciano the king of all wines.”

“Prince Metternich,” said the Baron, “is greater than any king in Italy; and I wonder, that this precious wine has never inspired a German poet to write a Bacchus on the Rhine.  Many little songs we have on this theme, but none very extraordinary.  The best are Max Schenkendorf’s Song of the Rhine, and the Song of Rhine Wine, by Claudius, a poet who never drank Rhenish without sugar.  We will drink for him a blessing on the Rhine.”

And again the crystal lips of the goblets kissed each other, with a musical chime, as of evening bells at vintage-time from the villages on the Rhine.  Of a truth, I do not much wonder, that the Germanpoet Schiller loved to write by candle-light with a bottle of Rhine-wine upon the table.  Nor do I wonder at the worthy schoolmaster Roger Ascham, when he says, in one of his letters from Germany to Mr. John Raven, of John’s College; `Tell Mr. Maden I will drink with him now a carouse of wine; and would to God he had a vessel of Rhenish wine; and perchance, when I come to Cambridge, I will so provide here, that every year I will have a little piece of Rhenish wine.’  Nor, in fine, do I wonder at the German Emperor of whom he speaks in another letter to the same John Raven, and says, `The Emperor drank the best that I ever saw; he had his head in the glass five times as long as any of us, and never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish wine.’  These were scholars and gentlemen.