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Untitled Article
tnastitllftie forays , whose shapes tffereangular iuid often linfctfutlik and whose infliienfceS Mv&re ibbl ( infrequently malevolent aim rude , though strange to say , imperious and fascinating . Such was the life that Novalis lived , or fancied he lived , ift his native village , amongst the hills . But our mention of itr te only in outline , and could he be persuaded to an autobiography , we should hear of some stratige inter-comituvnications arid
transactions which took place in this natural eorai&fcrae . How rapch of his soul was his own , and how much he had changed away , we are pretty sure he-could not have told * Tllfe Germans , who are grand Universalists , ate much more liberal of their nature and character than we English , frona the stiffness with which we preserve , hedge in , and keep tip dUr
identity , can have any idea of . It would be impossible to say how many different people ' s characters some Germans are running about with , thinking them one and their own . A little incongruity and contradiction are made matters of tto importance . It has been said of Goethe , that he was , at orie eflid the same time , a very good man and a very great rascal . In the cloudy country beyond the Rhine , the outlines of things run so into one another , that definition and distinction arteoftafci
matters of difficulty , and the words " subjectivity "and " objectivity * are sometimes quite sufficient to amalgamate vice Atitl virtue . As to these two latter essences , your true Gerotifth vfrould about a 3 lief defend one as the other . He considers it the first duty of an abstract philosopher to be utterly indif ferent to the pragmatical and conventional merits of either .
But we must return from this digression on the g * i ¥ fefnl German character , to that of our particulW h £ ro . Thottgfoift may not have been quite in its place , it has still Served in some degree to illustrate that of the latter . Except on thfe Otife
solitary subject of politics , Novalis was a thorongh-goilig German . He had all the pliability , mysticism , and extravagance of his countrymen . Witness one of hift predilections which we shall here relate . About his twentieth year he Wife seized with an irresistible desire to travel . He had contrived
a most singular idea of the proper nature and object of ' a . journey . He looked upon it as a kind of pilgrimage of religious service ; and prepared himself for -it with all e&itiBltness&nd singleness of heart . For hita , who seldom cotild ttead the precincts of his home without feeling an awe of Natule whifcn custom could never wear off , it wad an adventurottt met
of deep itpport to wander over her face * and discover tmw features winch even his imagination had not arttioipfcted . 4 f he had found the narrow limits of his native fcilto'tteofljM ^ wiih rauUi&nou * sp ^ nlA , Miid productive , of perpetual cha ** g £ fri W moral nature * and of ever-varying imprestionB * what had 2 Z
Untitled Article
9 % e jftgjftft dft the Rhine . tigf
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1836, page 687, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2663/page/35/
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