gentle woman for him, through many and many a day, and at last awoke from her love delusion as from a dream. Nothing certain was ever heard, after this period, of Cornelia Minotti or the Spanish student. But the captain of a Leghorn trader, who had been obliged to make a voyage to America, and had been up the country as far as Montreuil, stated that a young couple, answering their description, had some years before arrived at that city, and had afterwards purchased a section of land in the neighborhood. Upon this land they had built a small house, where they lived very secluded, never coming even to Montreuil except upon some very urgent occasion. The man, he said, was about thirty years of age, tall and of an olive complexion, with a seriousness of aspect which seemed to denote constitutional melancholy. The woman (who appeared about the same age) was extremely pale, but possessed a commanding figure, and a lustrous expression in her eyes that he had never seen equalled. They were, he understood, quite unoffending people, though reserved, charitable to the poor settlers and people around them, and, above all, appeared to entertain towards each other the most romantic and extravagant affection. 1823. A SHORT MYSTERY. IN the village of Rubeland (which is situate in the Lower Hartz, in the county of Reinstein) there are superstitions enough to satisfy a poet or a monk. There is not an old man who has not a goblin story to tell for every white hair that is left on his foolish head; and there is not a village girl who will go to sleep, on any night between Michaelmas and Easter, without mumbling a prayer for protection against the elves and dwarfs of the country. I am ashamed to say it, (for it is my native place,) but there is not perhaps a more ignorant and idle set of people than is to be found in this same village of Rubeland. It is like a spot on which the light of Heaven has never shone; dark, melancholy, and superstitious. The inhabitants work a little (and lazily) in the morning, in order to earn a miserable meal, and at night they bewilder their weak brains with telling and listening to stories about goblins and fairies, which would make a man of the world absolutely die with laughter to hear. The only excuse for them is, that their fathers and grandfathers up to the flood have been all as foolish as themselves. I never heard of a phi losopher having been born in Rubeland; no, not one. One fellow, indeed, who called himself an orator, and who had tolerable success as a travelling tinker and mountebank, claimed it as his native place and a poor youth, who slept all day for the purpose of writing nonsense-verses at night, was certainly born there; but no one else who can be called even remarkable. It is a singular fact that my great uncle Wilhelm should have chosen the neighborhood of this village to live in; but so it was. My uncle Wilhelm (the reader doubtless has often studied his learned productions) was professor of medicine in the colleges of Gottingen. It was he who made such a noise throughout all Germany, twenty years ago, by his famous papers on the disease hypochondriasis, as every body knows. During the winter months, and indeed during those parts of spring and autumn which verge upon winter, he dwelt at Gottingen in quality of professor; but in the full summer season he shut up his laboratory, and came to enjoy quiet and breathe the fresh air of the country, in the neighborhood of our village of Rubeland. My uncle was a sad sceptical fellow in some things. He laughed at the great ghost of the Hartz mountains the magic tower of Scharzfeld. the dwarf-holes of Walkenried the dancing pool the devil's wall the copper kettles of the elves, and all the rest of the infernal machinery of the little spirits; and positively roared himself into an asthma, and affronted three of the richest burghers of Blankenburg by the ridicule which he cast upon the idol Pustrich or Spit-fire to their faces. My uncle, moreover, cared nothing for : people only two inches and a half high. He had enough to do, he protested, with the larger race of fools but the little ones he left to the pigmy doctors, of whom he had no doubt but that there was a large number. It was natural, he said, that it should be so: it was as natural that there should be found doctors where there was plenty of patients, as that in places where there was a multitude of cabbages and fruit, there should be (as there always is) a plentiful stock of caterpillars and grubs. But my purpose is not, at present, to give a detail of my uncle Wilhelm's opinions, some of which might shock the tender-minded reader; but simply to rescue an anecdote, which I have heard him relate, from unmerited oblivion. I was going,' said he but I believe I must still keep him as the third person singular. I can manage the matter better in that way, and the reader will excuse me. - It was on a wet evening, then, in the month of September 17, that an elderly man, respectably dressed, stopped at the little inn of the village of Rubeland. On dismounting, he gave particular directions to the ostler to be careful of his nag (a stout little roadster), and proceeded straight to the kitchen fire, where he disencumbered himself of his outer coat and boots, and ordered the private room to be made ready for his reception. The landlady bustled about to do his bidding, while the stranger sat down quietly among the boors who crowded round the great kitchen fire, some of whom offered him the civility of the better seats, but he rejected all with a silent shake of the head, and in fact appeared to be occupied with any thing but what was going on around him. At last, his valise having been unstrapped and brought in, some idea or other occurred to his recollection, and he opened one of the ends of the leathern convenience,' and took thereout a bulky object, containing a variety of curious instruments, These he examined, wiping some and breathing upon others, and displaying all to the wondering eyes of the peasants, who were not long in coming to the conclusion that he was a conjuror of no common acquire, ments. The stranger, however, did not observe their astonishment. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether he remembered that any one was near him; for he quoted once or twice a Latin sentence, pressed a concealed spring or two in some of the instruments, which shot out their steel talons at his touch, and in a word performed such other marvels, as occasioned a consid erable sensation among his spectators. If the truth must be told, they all huddled together more closely than before, and avoided coming in contact even with the tail of his coat. All this could not last long, the more especially as the little busy landlady had done her best in the mean time to get the stranger's room in order, and which she announced as being ready at the very moment that he was in the midst of a Latin soliloquy. This he cut short without ceremony on hearing the news, took up his valise, instruments, &c., and quitted the kitchen for the parlor. • What a magician? an ogre ? And now came the time for conjecture. could the stranger be? а 'but they waited to see whether or not he would order two or three little children to be roasted for |