Sylvester was glad to see him, and said, "it is a long time since I saw your father. We were both young then. I was quite solicitous to teach him the treasures of the Fore-time, the rich legacies bequeathed to us by a world too early separated from us. I noticed in him the tokens of a great artist; his eye flashed with the desire to become a correct eye, a creative instrument; his face indicated inward constancy and persevering industry. But the present world had already taken hold of him too deeply; he would not listen to the call of his own nature. The stern hardihood of his native sky had blighted in him the tender buds of the noblest plants; he became an able mechanic, and inspiration seemed to him but foolishness."
"Indeed," said Henry, "I often observed a silent sadness within him. He always labored from mere habit, and not for any pleasure. He seems to feel a want, which the peaceful quiet and comfort of his life, the pleasure of being honored and beloved by his townsmen, and consulted in all important affairs of the city, cannot satisfy. His friends consider him very happy; but they know not how weary he is of life, how empty the world appears to him, how he longs to depart from it; and that he works so industriously not so much for the sake of gain, as to dissipate such moods."
"What I am most surprised at," replied Sylvester, "is that he has committed your education entirely into the hands of your mother, and has carefully abstained from taking any part in your development, nor has ever held you to any fixed occupation. You can happily say that you have been permitted to grow up free from all parental restraints; for most men are but the relics of a feast which men of different appetites and tastes have plundered."
"I myself know not," replied Henry, "what education is, except that derived from the life and disposition of my parents, or the instruction of my teacher, the chaplain. My father with all his cool and sturdy habits of thought, which leads him to regard all relations like a piece of metal or a work of art, yet involuntarily and unconsciously exhibits a silent reverence and godly fear before all incomprehensible and lofty phenomena, and therefore looks upon the blooming growth of the child with humble self-denial. A spirit is busy here, playing fresh from the infinite fountain; and this feeling of the superiority of a child in the loftiest matters, the irresistible thought of an intimate guidance of the innocent being who is just entering on a course so critical, the impress of a wondrous world, which no earthly currents have yet obliterated, and then too the sympathizing memory of that golden age when the world seemed to us clearer, kindlier, and more unwonted, and the almost visible spirit of prophecy attended us,--all this has certainly won my father to a system the most devout and discreet."
"Let us seat ourselves upon the grass among the flowers," said the old man interrupting him. "Cyane will call us when our evening meal is ready. I pray you continue your account of your early life. We old people love much to hear of childhood's years, and it seems as if I were drinking the odor of a flower, which I had not inhaled since my infancy. Tell me first, however, how my solitude and garden please you, for these flowers are my friends; my heart is in this garden. You see nothing that loves me not, that is not tenderly beloved. I am here in the midst of my children, like an old tree from whose roots, has sprouted this merry youth."
"Happy father," said Henry, "your garden is the world. The ruins are the mothers of these blooming children; this manifold animate creation draws its support from the fragments of past time. But must the mother die, that the children may thrive? Does the father remain sitting alone at their tomb, in tears forever?"
Sylvester gave his hand to the sighing youth, and then arose to pluck a fresh forget-me-not, which he tied to a cypress branch and brought to him. The evening wind waved strangely in the tops of the pines which stood beyond the ruins, and sent over their hollow murmur. Henry hid his face bedewed with tears upon the neck of the good Sylvester, and when he looked again, the evening star arose in full glory above the forest.
After some silence, Sylvester began; "You would probably like to be at Eisenach among your friends. Your parents, the excellent countess, your father's upright neighbors, and the old chaplain make a fair social circle. Their conversation must have produced an early influence upon you, particularly as you were the only child. I also imagine the country to be very striking and agreeable."
"I learn for the first time," said Henry, "to esteem my native country properly, since my absence, and the sight of many other lands. Every plant, every tree, every hill and mountain has its own horizon, its peculiar landscape, which belongs to it, and explains its whole structure and nature. Only men and animals can visit all countries; all countries are theirs. Thus together they form one great region, one infinite horizon, whose influence upon men and animals is just as visible, as that of a more narrow circuit upon the plant. Hence men who have travelled, birds of passage, and beasts of prey, are distinguished among other faculties, for a remarkable intelligence. Yet they certainly possess more or less susceptibility to the influence of these circles, and of their varied contents and arrangement. The attention and composure necessary to contemplate properly the alternation and connexion of things, and then to reflect upon and compare them, are in fact wanting to most men. I myself often feel how my native land has breathed upon my earliest thoughts imperishable colors, and how its image has become a peculiar feature of my mind, which I am ever better explaining to myself, the deeper I perceive that fate and mind are but names of one idea."
"Upon me," said Sylvester, "living nature, the emotive outer-garment of a landscape, has always produced a most powerful effect. Especially I am never tired of examining most carefully the different natures of plants. All productions of the earth are its primitive language; every new leaf, every particular flower, is everywhere a mystery, which presses outward; and since it cannot move itself at love and joy, nor come to words, becomes a mute, quiet plant. When we find such a flower in solitude, is it not as if everything about it were glorified, and as if the little feathered songsters loved most to linger near it? One could weep for joy, and separated from the world, plant hand and foot in the earth, to give it root, and never abandon the happy neighborhood. Over all the sterile world is spread this green, mysterious carpet of love. Every Spring it is renewed, and its peculiar writing is legible only to the loved one, like the nosegay of the East; he will read forever, yet never enough, and will perceive daily new meanings, new delightful revelations of loving nature. This infinite enjoyment is the secret charm, which the survey of the earth's surface has for me, while each region solves other riddles, and has always led me to divine whence I came and whither I go."