would extinguish them, would be worse than darkness.
It must however be allowed that, with the Germans, fancy has had too much sway, for it has seldom been under the guidance of sound taste, and the consequence is, that the multitude of their original fictions is disgraced by the most babarous absurdities. The same may, in some measure, be said of their modern romance, but at the same time the reader can not fail to be delighted with the variety and richness of its inventions, diablerie with the Germans being as inexhaustible as the fairyism of the Eastern world. Sometimes it is presented to us under its most terrific forms; at others it appears, as in Musäus under a light veil of irony, in a tone half jest, half earnest and that is, indeed, its most beautiful