Such a fresh glance into a new land in which we are to abide for a time, has still the peculiarity, both pleasant and foreboding, that the whole lies before us like an unwritten tablet.  As yet no sorrows and joys which relate to ourselves are recorded upon it; this cheerful, varied, animated plain is still mute for us; the eye is only fixed on the objects so far as they are intrinsically important, and neither affection nor passion has especially to render prominent this or that spot.  But a presentiment of the future already disquiets the young heart; and an unsatisfied craving secretly demands that which is to come and may come, and which at all events, whether for good or ill, will imperceptibly assume the character of the spot in which we find ourselves.

Having descended the height, I still tarried a while before the face of the venerable pile; but what I could not quite clearly make out, either the first or the following time, was, that I regarded this miracle as a monster, which must have terrified me, if it had not, at the same time, appeared to me comprehensible by its regularity, and even pleasing in its finish.  Yet I by no means busied myself with meditating on this contradiction, but suffered a monument so astonishing quietly to work upon me by its presence.

I took small, but well-situated and pleasant, lodgings, on the north side of the Fish-market, a fine, long street, where the everlasting motion came to the assistance of every unoccupied moment.  I then delivered my letters of introduction, and found among my patrons a merchant, who, with his family, was devoted to those pious opinions sufficiently known to me, although, as far as regarded external worship, he had not separated from the Church.  He was a man of intelligence withal, and by no means hypocritical in his conduct.  The company of boarders which was recommended to me, and, indeed, I to it, was very agreeable and entertaining.  A couple of old maids had long kept up this boarding-house with regularity and good success:  there might have been about ten persons, older and younger.  Of these latter, one named Meyer, a native of Lindau, is most vividly present to my mind.  From his form and face he might have been considered one of the handsomest of men, if, at the same time, he had not had something of the sloven in his whole appearance.  In like manner his splendid natural talents were marred by an incredible levity, and his excellent temper by an unbounded dissoluteness.  He had an open, jovial face, rather more round than oval:  the organs of the senses, the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, could be called rich; they showed a decided fulness, without being too large.  His mouth was particularly charming, owing to his curling lips; and his whole physiognomy had the peculiar expression of a rake, from the circumstance that his eyebrows met across his nose, which, in a handsome face, always produces a pleasant expression of sensuality.  By his jovialness, sincerity,