grand daughter, Industry. She is "Dost thou not know us, dearest Ilse? We are the wood of thy cherished trees. Fear not, we'll do thee no harm." Just then, the miller stepped out and began to raise the gate. "Come here little Ilse," he cried encouragingly. "Thou hast remained long enough in thy pond. Come, stir thyself, and help us work." Nor did the little Princess hesitate, but gathering her robes together she ran quickly to the wheel, trembling at first a little, and, stepping carefully from one spoke to another; but rushing boldly for ward when she felt the wheel move beneath her light footstep, she let her veil stream in the breeze, pulled on her tiny foam-cap and finally shot, shouting and roaring along the mill stream; whilst the wheel swung round its mighty arms, the mill kept time to it, and silver bright pearls, shaken from Ilse's moist ringlet, streamed from every spoke. a gold-digger, ploughing up the whole earth in her search after the precious metal, aud never sparing even the last tree, when it stands in her ruthless course. Whole forests fall before her, their place to be filled by beet-farms, and great stone buildings with their wearisome chimneys stretching up into heaven. When she enters, Poesy flies." Little Ilse, clasping her hands, seemed in such deep despair that the Pine added: "Don't let that pain thee, child. It will be a long time before Industry will trouble us. At best, she has an aversion from mountains, and builds her abode in the plains. And besides, we will pray to God to preserve our loved and peaceful valley from her hands. But Agriculture is a true servant of the Lord, and heralds blessings and prosperity and God's own word. Hearest thou not the sweet soothing peal of the morning and evening bells, rise from the valley. The Emperor has given that castle yonder to a good Bishop; and he has established a cloister for pious monks. It is their people who have settled here among us." After this explanation, little Ilse lost her fear of man, and, pressing against the door of her new mansion, crept drop by drop through the crevices to see what was around her. Not far below, she saw a powerful, newly constructed millwheel, and the miller's curly headed son standing upon the platform. "Yes, peep out, Princess Ilse," he cried laughingly. "We'll open the door directly, and then when the dance begins, how you shall be whirled round by the wheel !" "Am I to be broken on the wheel!" she cried and glanced with beating heart upon what seemed to her a gigantic instrument of torture. The latter began to creak and groan in every spoke, and whispered to her: Little Ilse was now a worker in man's service-the water of life and prosperity to the valley and its inhabitants. With men she laboured in the mills, and in the iron works, where she made the dreaded acquaintance of Fire and learnt that the aversion was mutual, he standing as much in awe of her as she of him. Hence they never met, except when it was necessary to the work, and then parted as soon as possible. In bright buckets the Princess entered her co-workmen's houses, giving valuable aid to their wives and daughters in their domestic duties, in the kitchen, in washing and in scouring. She washed and bathed the children, watered the flowers in the garden, and the vegetable beds-in a word, blushed at no work, however humble. Nor needed she to blush, for she lost nothing of her princely rank by her lowly labours of love among the sons of men. Many centuries had elapsed since Princess Ilse had first set her foot on the mill-wheel. The monks had deserted the ancient abbey; Luther's teaching had overspread the valley, and a noble race of Earls had taken possession of it, and had for a long, long time flourished and ruled there. Little Ilse served them and their subjects as she had before served the monks and their tributaries. When the castle began to fall into ruins and the Counts Stolberg sought another and stronger fortress for their residence, care was taken that Princess Ilse and her beloved vale should not suffer by the change. Industrious, hardworking men. came every day in greater numbers into the Princess' domain, and worked in common with her to extract the mountain's noble sap-the mighty iron-to reduce it to steel and to give it the form suited to the purposes of human wants. stain, then it was that she coursed most lustrous and vigorous, and reflected heaven's light with renewed power and clearness. But another deep wound had little Ilse's heart to sustain. As the cultivation of later times, ever grasping at more, increased; a broad path was cut through the valley for the car wheel, the ground was upturned by spades and pick-axes, and a number of lofty trees were again levelled to the ground, and the chaussée, which had been wrung from nature only by force, had to be maintained by force. "I won't stand it! I never shall become reconciled to it!" cried Ilse, that this wearisome creature with the French name, shall, year after year, creep along my borders with its snail pace, playing gouvernante to me, and putting me under all kinds of restraint. Who gave it the right to bid me: 'Slowly Ilse, don't come too near the flowers, nor leap and foam so. Be stately and dignified as I am. Behave like that honest fellow there, that forest-bridge, who from his shady nook under yon rock, is beckoning to you to be quiet." Wild with rage, little Ilse foamed against the rocks which supported the bridge, endeavouring to tear them from their position, so that the bridge might fall with the hated French creature. "Ilse! Ilse!" cried the Pine with a warning voice, "what mad childish freaks art thou after? Hast thou not yet learnt that we must all bear that which tends to man's advantage. If we trees can endure the chaussée, surely thou canst. It is with no Early and late, might little Ilse be seen industriously at work; nor did she ever tire or complain of the labour, toilsome though it was. If you met her in the valley, just when emerging from the forest, radiant in her crystal purity, you could not but recognize at a glance, the Princess of the purest waterthe daughter of light. Still Ilse had by no means become a saint, and when the Lord God, from time to time, suffered a thunder storm to break upon her, stirring up her waters from their lowest depths and bringing to light all her secret sins and frailties, from which after all, not even the best of us is free, little Ilse would sorrow deeply. joy I assure thee that we see the The storms, however, generally had the effect upon her which those of life should have upon men, viz: to increase her self-knowledge and to purify her, for when the impure in her had been washed away, and she had been cleansed from all spot and dust coloured trains sweep through the forest. Shame, Ilse! shame! Just see how the witches are laughing at you." The devils' revels on the Brocken, you must know, had long been abolished. Ever since Christianity had taken its abode there, had the dislodged hags and devils wandered through the country in various disguises, assuming at times the loveliest and most enticing forms, in order to deceive and lure unwary souls into their dark domain. A set of these young imps, who had not yet forgiven little Ilse for throwing them into the shade by the splendour and the charms she had displayed on the Brocken, came every summer as spies upon her, seeking to frighten her friends, even if they could do no other harm. Assuming the bright, red garb of the Foxglove, these witches stood in coquettish groups upon an open plain of the mountain, basking in the clear sunshine. Then winking to the ferns, they would call out to the modest little Blue Bells, that they-Blue Bells and Foxgloves-were closely related. In this way they hoped to excite a quarrel. Luckily, the blue bells, spied the poisonous drops which lurked in the calix of the brilliant Foxglove, and in reply gently shook their heads and slipped away to the side of Ilse and begged the ferns to stand before them and save them from again looking upon this tricky race. Ilse looked up shyly at what was passing, and as she flowed along, offered a silent prayer. She stroked both Blue Bells and Fern, whose friendship had been tried, and if on any occasion she thought that the pebbles in her bed were looking up with too eager faces at the Fox-gloves, she would cast over them a silvery veil and blind the treacherous Foxgloves by the glittering rays which she shot up in their faces. When Ilse found that she could not keep the chaussée out of her valley, she wished to have as little to do with it as possible. She would try to escape from the sight of it by winding snakelike through the depths of the forest; but as in her mad career she rushed over some precipice and thought that she had forever escaped from her dusty companion, suddenly the chaussée would run athwart her, and throw a bridge across her path; and she, a princess, must bend beneath the yoke, smother her resentment and glide on in the hope of soon reaching some spot where she might be freer. But little Ilse's anger never lasted long and she was soon again coursing quietly through the valley, side by side with the chaussée, kissing modestly the feet of the Ilsenstein, which bears upon its summit the Holy Cross. Princess Ilse is still alive and daily in the mills and iron works of the valley, pursues her humble occupation. And when, on the Sabbath, the mills are hushed and the industrious inhabitants of the valley, in their holiday garb, ascend the mountain upon whose summit stands the castle, to offer up their prayers and hear in its ancient chapel the word of God, pure and unpolluted, preached with force and heartfelt fervor; the silvery voice of little Ilse may be heard rippling in unison with the sound of bell and organ as they peal from the walls of the old fortress, far over the valley beneath. In the many centuries that she has been flowing through the valley, scattering blessings on every side, little Ilse has lost nothing of her original freshness and loveliness. She has drunk, in fact, of the never failing waters of the fountain of eternal youth; which, clear and limpid, casting off its own impurities by its ceaseless activity, is ever gushing from the firmly set rock, where God has placed it, within the reach of every thirsty soul who rightly seeks it. Princess Ilse has shown the world what even a spoilt and silly child can become, when she has once expelled the demon, pride, from her heart; and in those who, weary of the barren and desert and inhospitable and glaring mountain sides of every day life, retire to her valley, longing for returning spring, her spirit awakens childhood's fondest memories. They are again children-every care and anxiety being forgotten so long as they linger beneath the fragrant shadow of her forest, where the verdure is more brilliant and the air fresher and more joy-inspiring than in any other valley of the world. Nor does Ilse fear any more the devil and the witches, when gliding under the shadow of the Ilsenstein. Indeed so bold has she become, that often when summer visitors wish to boil their coffee on her mossy bank, beneath the Ilsenstein, she leaps into their kettle, and allows the hostess of the party to take the entire credit of the coffee, asking for herself neither praise nor other reward than that those who have had the great good luck to drink coffee made with the water of the Ilse, should pay a small fee of cake to her little rock-mice. These rock-mice live in the stony crevices of her mossy bank, and are lineally descended from the rock-mouse who cut the little path down the sides of the Brocken, through which Ilse in the gray dawn of time first found her way into the valley below. It is not to be sure every party of visitors that has the honour of seeing the sharp little heads and the piercing eyes of these pretty creatures, pop up from beneath their bed of moss, for the rock mouse is very retiring and very particular about the company it keeps. Whoever should see one is bound "by the wrath of Ilse" to feed it with cake, or with whatever else men like to munch with their coffee or mice to nibble in their rocky nests. A treaty to this effect was concluded on a beautiful day in August, in the year of our Lord 1851, committed to writing, sealed, deposited safely under the Ilsenstein, and treasured in the memories of the coffee-drinkers, who then fed the little rock-mice. And here ends this tale. Having nestled itself deep in the green mountain valley, it has no desire to accompany little Ilse in her descent to the lowlands, where, meeting the Acker and the Ocker, and later the Aller, she is carried to the old Weser-to the old Weser, who, having them-Ocker, Acker, Aller, Ilse and their dependant streamletsonce in her grasp, hurries them all far away into the limitless deep. Yet there is one thing which this tale would gladly know! What are the sensations of little Ilse when she finds herself so far at sea? FROM AN UNFINISHED DRAMA. Let the boy have his will! I tell thee, brother, Sticks of our own poor setting, when they might, Thou'ld'st strive to imbue with feelings all thine own I could forgive thee, if thou wast of them Who do their fated parts in this world's business, Scarce knowing how or why, for common minds See not the difference 'twixt themselves and others: But thou, THOU with the visions which thy youth did cherish, Should'st boast a deeper insight. We are born, Our smiles have different meanings, and our hands It is not change-whatever in the heart That wears its semblance, we in looking back With gratulation or regret perceive It is not change we undergo, but only Growth or development. Yes! what is childhood, A beautiful and blessed wealth of sunshine, |