LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 747, 10 November 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

Is EE SMITH.

Near to one of the smaller Bhine cities stood, about two years ago, a picturesque tumble down building, mounted upon a hill, and known as Schloss Pfannigstein. It had belonged to the Von Pfannigstein family for centuries, and the city people looked on with considerable veneration, and talked of going up to the Castle as if it were only next best to going to Court. In this venerable abode dwelt the widowed Frau von Pfannigstein and her only son, with just two or three old servants of the Caleb Balderstone type; and to an English person there certainly seemed nothing very grand or imposing in the castle menage. The Frau herself was rather a finelooking old lady, who could be very magnificent upon occasion with hereditary finery, but who ordinarily went about the house with a cambric handkerchief tied over her head, and her dress looped up after a fashion which looked as if it meant business. The Her von Pfannigstein was a tall aristocratic young man, with a great deal of long light hair, and rather sentimental blue eyes, and a general air of having smoked too much and not having had enough to do nor enough to eat of a solid kind. He had been to a German university, and had studied mathematics and rhetoric, and moral philosophy, and had fought one or two duels (with swords) in which nobody had been much hurt, had conducted himself quite like the accepted type of a ‘ Borsch’ in every respect. After that he had served in the German army for a year at his own expense, and being thus, like other ‘ Eiojahrige,’ released from the obligations of further military service, had now come back to live on his estate, which was of the smallest; and having no particular employment beyond walking through his vineyards and fields occasionally, or riding down to the town, had been obliged to fall back on his mental resources, and had taken to the composition of small poems on a great variety of subjects. They were such as to make one think of the Frenchman's comment on another poet, ‘II a beaucoup 1& and by examining them week by week one could have told exactly what book he had been reading last, German unity was a very prevailing topic, and by that one could tell that he read the newspapers. Sometimes he got patriotic and warlike, and then he produced vile imitations of Korner’s ‘ Sword Song sometimes he was metaphysical, and taen the verses were like little bits of the second book of ‘ Faust’ diluted ; more often he was sentimental, and wrote lines to ‘ Lili,’ to * Glarchen,* &c., which bore a distant likeness to some of Goethe’s earlier poems, and a stronger resemblance to Goethe's host of imitators. All this passed the time agreeably, but there was one great drawback to his thorough enjoyment of it, and that was that he had no one to whom he could show his poems when they were finished. There was his mother certainly, but she was not poetical, and had never been known to like anything that rhymed, except a few really good hymns, such as ‘ Ein ’ feste Burg.’ He was not ambitious of publicity; the Yon Pfannigsteins had their own peculiar dignity, and had never aspired to shine in the literary world. What he would have liked would have been to have a few copies of his gems privately printed, and send them to his college friends and their sisters ; but this, like many other small luxuries, he could not afford. He did send a few in manuscript to one favored friend, with whom he kept up a voluminous correspondence of a kind which would have made a young Englishman stare; but as this friend could produce articles quite identical, he perhaps scarcely appreciated them with sufficient intensity. The interchange of sentiment in their letters, though, was certainly delightful. They both said a great deal about their ‘ Innere,’ which seemed to give them much more trouble than one would have supposed from their placid exteriors, and they both described ‘ soul-conflicts’ ‘ struggles of the cloud-aspiring element’ within them, and other mysterious mental processes which seemed to lead to nothing in particular, but which wire very gratifying [to pecord nevertheless. Still, even this was not altogether satisfying, and the young; Herr had been suffering from ennui considerably for several months, when a diversion came in a sudden and unexpected shape. In a flat of one of the city houses—in the most aristocratic quarter, be it mentioned—lived a certain Fraulien von Knebel, a withered old maid of unimpeachable lineage, who, like her friends the Yon Pfannigsteins, possessed little of this world’s gear —so little, indeed, that she could barely pay her rent and provide for her own subsistence; and as it was impossible that a Yon Knebel should go into less aristocratic, and therefore cheaper lodgings, she made what she esteemed a lighter sacrifice, and consented to receive a young English lady of good fortune to board with her, in return for a handsome equivalent. This young lady was an orphan ; she wasone-and-twenty, and her name was Leonora Smith, She had been living for the last year or two with her guardian and his wife, and had come abroad with them ; but they were not people whom she could thoroughly like, and now that she was of age she was glad of an excuse for getting away from them ; so, when they decided on returning to England, she announced her intention of remaining a year in Germany to study the language, and, accordingly, had become domesticated in the unexceptionable society of the Fraulein von Knebel, through whom she speedily became acquainted with the Von Pfannigsteins. {To be continued.')