First I will confess that the lines describing the happy love of a handsome young couple to whom I had myself become warmly attached, flowed from my pen involuntarily, even against my will (I intended to write a novel in prose) in the quiet night, by the eternal Nile, among the palms and roses.  The first love-scene has a story of its own to me.  I wrote it in half an hour, almost unconsciously.  It may be read in my book that the Persians always reflected in the morning, when sober, upon the resolutions formed the night before, while drunk.  When I examined in the sunshine what had come into existence by lamplight, I grew doubtful of its merits, and was on the point of destroying the love-scenes altogether, when my dear friend Julius Hammer, the author of “Schau in Dich, und Schau um Dich,” too early summoned to the other world by death, stayed my hand.  Their form was also approved by others, and I tell myself that the ‘poetical’ expression of love is very similar in all lands and ages, while lovers’ conversations and modes of intercourse vary according to time and place.  Besides, I have to deal with one of those by no means rare cases, where poetry can approach nearer the truth than prudent, watchful prose.  Many of my honored critics have censured these scenes; others, among whom are some whose opinion I specially value, have lavished the kindest praise upon them.  Among these gentlemen I will mention A. Stahr, C. V. Holtei, M. Hartmann, E. Hoefer, W. Wolfsohn, C. Leemans, Professor Veth of Amsterdam, etc.  Yet I will not conceal the fact that some, whose opinion has great weight, have asked:  “Did the ancients know anything of love, in our sense of the word?  Is not romantic love, as we know it, a result of Christianity?” The following sentence, which stands at the head of the preface to my first edition, will prove that I had not ignored this question when I began my task.

“It has often been remarked that in Cicero’s letters and those of Pliny the younger there are unmistakable indications of sympathy with the more sentimental feeling of modern days.  I find in them tones of deep tenderness only, such as have arisen and will arise from sad and aching hearts in every land and every age.”

A. v.  Humboldt.  Cosmos ii.  P. 19.

This opinion of our great scholar is one with which I cheerfully coincide and would refer my readers to the fact that love-stories were written before the Christian era:  the Amor and Psyche of Apuleius for instance.  Indeed love in all its forms was familiar to the ancients.  Where can we find a more beautiful expression of ardent passion than glows in Sappho’s songs? or of patient faithful constancy than in Homer’s Penelope?  Could there be a more beautiful picture of the union of two loving hearts, even beyond the grave, than Xenophon has preserved for us in his account of Panthea and Abradatas? or the story of Sabinus the Gaul and his wife, told in