Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/199

 there was also floating gratis a vernal sun,—and red twilights,—and flower-garlands,—and a bursting halfworld of buds!.…

How didst thou behave thee in these hot whirlpools of pleasure?—Thou movedst thy Fishtail (Reason), and therewith describedst for thyself a rectilineal course through the billows. For even half as much would have hurried another Parson from his study; but the very crowning felicity of ours was, that he stood as if rooted to the boundary-hill of Moderation, and from thence looked down on what thousands flout away. Sitting opposite the Castle-windows, he was still in a condition to reckon up that Amen occurs in the Bible one hundred and thirty times. Nay, to his old learned laboratory he now appended a new chemical stove; he purposed writing to Nürnberg and Baireuth, and there offering his pen to the Brothers Senft, not only for composing practical Receipts at the end of their Almanacs, but also for separate Essays in front under the copperplate title of each Month, because he had a thought of making some reformatory cuts at the common people's mental habitudes … And now, when in the capacity of Parson he had less to do, and could add to the holy resting-day of the congregation six literary creating-days, he determined (even in these Carnival weeks) to strike his plough into the hitherto quite fallow History of Hukelum, and soon to follow the plough with his drill.…

Thus roll his minutes, on golden wheels-of-fortune, over the twelve days, which form the glancing star-paved road to the third heaven of the thirteenth, that is, to the