Page:Gleanings from Germany (1839).djvu/17

 stands a summer-house. Eastward a beaten path leads towards a hermitage, situated deep within the bosom of the wood: here I wished to take up my abode for the night, should the hermit and myself prove mutually pleased with each other. In my juvenile years I had read much of such hermitages, and with all the romantic imagination of youth, pictured to myself, in the most picturesque and seducing colours, these happy calm retreats and their holy inhabitants. As yet I had never had an opportunity of beholding such a spot, and now, therefore, wished to gratify my curiosity. Accordingly, I was proceeding down a declivity of the mountain, through the thickets and young brambles which opposed my descent, when my progress was suddenly arrested by the appearance of a venerable man; it was the hermit himself, who had just come from having offered his evening prayers in the chapel, some hundred paces distant from his hermitage, to which solitary dwelling he was now returning. I greeted him with silent respect and veneration, to which he as silently replied.

“May I, venerable father, be allowed to enter your holy dwelling?”—I enquired modestly.

“What is your object in making that request?” he replied, in a tone not altogether repulsive, though neither was it friendly.

“Why, I have no particular motive to satisfy.”—I replied, with a good-natured smile, “I am a native of the north, travelling through your beautiful country; I have never as yet beheld either hermit or hermitage, though both have often been the subjects of my youthful fancy and meditation; I feel desirous, therefore, holy father, of now satisfying my curiosity, by passing a short and instructive hour in your society. You are more wise and pious than we children of the world; you live in solitude and seclusion; you pass your time in acts of devotion; your silent prayers are not disturbed by those guilty agitations of mind to which we unhappily are too often exposed, and God is nearer to you, because you are more pure and guiltless of those misdeeds with which we too often have