CHAPTER XXVI. IN WHICH THE READER WILL LEARN HOW THE FAIRIES WERE
RECEIVED BY THE SOVEREIGNS OF THE MINES.—THE COMPLAINT OF THE LAST OF THE FAUNS.—THE RED HUNTSMAN.—THE STORM.—DEATH.
IN the deep valley of Ehrenthal, the metal kings—the Prince of the Silver Palaces, the Gnome Monarch of the dull Lead Mine, the President of the Copper United States—held a court to receive the fairy wanderers from the island of Nonnewerth.
The prince was there, in a gallant hunting-suit of oak leaves, in honour to England; and wore a profusion of fairy orders, which had been instituted from time to time, in honour of the human poets that had celebrated the spiritual and ethereal tribes. Chief of these, sweet Dreamer of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” was the badge crystallized from the dews that rose above the whispering reeds of Avon on the night of thy birth,—the great epoch of the intellectual world! Nor wert thou, O beloved Musaeus! nor thou, dim-dreaming Tieck! nor were ye, the wild imaginer of the bright-haired Undine, and the wayward spirit that invoked for the gloomy Manfred the Witch of the breathless Alps and the spirits of earth and air!—nor were ye without the honours of fairy homage! Your memory may fade from the heart of man, and the spells of new enchanters may succeed to the charm you once wove over the face of the common world; but still in the green knolls of the haunted valley and the deep shade of forests, and the starred palaces of air, ye are honoured by the beings of your dreams, as demigods and kings! Your graves are tended by invisible hands, and the places of your birth are hallowed by no perishable worship!
Even as I write,* far away amidst the hills of Scotland, and by the forest thou hast clothed with immortal verdure, thou, the maker of “the Harp by lone Glenfillan’s spring,” art passing from the earth which thou hast “painted with delight.” And such are the chances of mortal fame, our children’s children may raise new idols on the site of thy holy altar, and cavil where their sires adored; but for thee the mermaid of the ocean shall wail in her coral caves, and the sprite that lives in the waterfalls shall mourn! Strange shapes shall hew thy monument in the recesses of the lonely rocks! ever by moonlight shall the fairies pause from their roundel when some wild note of their minstrelsy reminds them of thine own,—ceasing from their revelries, to weep for the silence of that mighty lyre, which breathed alike a revelation of the mysteries of spirits and of men!
* It was just at the time the author was finishing this work
that the great master of his art was drawing to the close
of his career.
The King of the Silver Mines sat in a cavern in the valley, through which the moonlight pierced its way and slept in shadow on the soil shining with metals wrought into unnumbered shapes; and below him, on a humbler throne, with a gray beard and downcast eye, sat the aged King of the Dwarfs that preside over the dull realms of lead, and inspire the verse of ——-, and the prose of ——-! And there too a fantastic household elf was the President of the Copper Republic,—a spirit that loves economy and the Uses, and smiles sparely on the Beautiful. But, in the centre of the cave, upon beds of the softest mosses, the untrodden growth of ages, reclined the fairy visitors, Nymphalin seated by her betrothed. And round the walls of the cave were dwarf attendants on the sovereigns of the metals, of a thousand odd shapes and fantastic garments. On the abrupt ledges of the rocks the bats, charmed to stillness but not sleep, clustered thickly, watching the scene with fixed and amazed eyes; and one old gray owl, the favourite of the witch of the valley, sat blinking in a corner, listening with all her might that she might bring home the scandal to her mistress.
“And tell me, Prince of the Rhine-Island Fays,” said the King of the Silver Mines, “for thou art a traveller, and a fairy that hath seen much, how go men’s affairs in the upper world? As to ourself, we live here in a stupid splendour, and only hear the news of the day when our brother of lead pays a visit to the English printing-press, or the President of Copper goes to look at his improvements in steam-engines.”
“Indeed,” replied Fayzenheim, preparing to speak like AEneas in the Carthaginian court,—“indeed, your Majesty, I know not much that will interest you in the present aspect of mortal affairs, except that you are quite as much honoured at this day as when the Roman conqueror bent his knee to you among the mountains of Taunus; and a vast number of little round subjects of yours are constantly carried about by the rich, and pined after with hopeless adoration by the poor. But, begging your Majesty’s pardon, may I ask what has become of your cousin, the King of the Golden Mines? I know very well that he has no dominion in these valleys, and do not therefore wonder at his absence from your court this night; but I see so little of his subjects on earth that I should fear his empire was well nigh at an end, if I did not recognize everywhere the most servile homage paid to a power now become almost invisible.”
The King of the Silver Mines fetched a deep sigh. “Alas, prince,” said he, “too well do you divine the expiration of my cousin’s empire. So many of his subjects have from time to time gone forth to the world, pressed into military service and never returning, that his kingdom is nearly depopulated. And he lives far off in the distant parts of the earth, in a state of melancholy seclusion; the age of gold has passed, the age of paper has commenced.”