You understand the German language at all?"
I had not that honour.
"Well, you must learn it. We have much to teach you in the sphere of
abstract thought, as you have much to teach us in those of the practical
reason and the knowledge of mankind. I should be glad to see you some
day in a German university. I am anxious to encourage a truly spiritual
fraternization between the two great branches of the Teutonic stock, by
welcoming all brave young English spirits to their ancient fatherland.
Perhaps hereafter your kind friends here will be able to lend you to me.
The means are easy, thank God! You will find in the Germans true brothers,
in ways even more practical than sympathy and affection."
I could not but thank the great man, with many blushes, and went home that
night utterly _"tete montee,"_ as I believe the French phrase is--beside
myself with gratified vanity and love; to lie sleepless under a severe fit
of asthma--sent perhaps as a wholesome chastisement to cool my excited
spirits down to something like a rational pitch. As I lay castle-building,
Lillian's wild air rang still in my ears, and combined itself somehow with
that picture of the Cheshire sands, and the story of the drowned girl,
till it shaped itself into a song, which, as it is yet unpublished, and
as I have hitherto obtruded little or nothing of my own composition on my
readers, I may be excused for inserting it here.
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