The Argosy — page 68: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

In the Black Forest. | 55 as the pack fell from the back of Christian ; and a strange soul-sense steals over the spirit, begotten of all this divine beauty of creation, that, while it lasts, is surely a foretaste of a celestial world. A sense, evanescent as a vapour, fleeting as the trail of a meteor; almost as soon gone as it is come; within us, yet seemingly as far off and intangible as the flush of sunset, which one moment colours a passing cloud and dies the next. The beauties of nature, and also certain strains of perfect music, address themselves to the infinite in man, find their response, and, for a moment, raise him to Paradise. And though it is but for a moment; and though the floodgates of that sudden glory fall back and close, and leave him cold, and dark, and disconsolate, yet it has been a vision, an experience; it is never forgotten, and he is the better for it for ever after. It is an earnest of a time coming when the “burden of this mortality” shall have given place to an ideal which the spirit recognizes even here, but the mind fails to apprehend. It was prosy daylight to-day, but the prosiness lurking on the banks of the Rhine, and peering out of the ruined turrets and crumbling walls of Heidelberg Castle, would form an inexhaustible mine of romance elsewhere. ‘The train soon left the river, and passed onwards, still through loveliest country ; amidst vineyards and great stretches of land planted with waving Indian grass and huge pumpkins, and the large strong leaf of the tobacco plant; hop- gardens here and there, growing to a giant height unknown in England. Mountains always in view; now near, as the valley closed in; now so far off that their soft wavy undulations faded into space. Between five and six o’clock we entered the lovely district surrounding Baden-Baden, the pine-clad hills that announce the region of the Black Forest, and at length the train passed into the shelter of the station—shelter much needed, for there came down a shower of hail the like of which I had scarcely ever seen; that cruel hail that does come down in this land in the hottest weather, and is so dreaded by the vine growers. Few towns equal Baden-Baden in the beauty of its situation and surroundings: no spot in the Black Forest abounds more in romantic drives and short, charming excursions, where day after day you may choose some fresh elevation for your pilgrimage, and gaze down upon a widespread view. You may get more closely into the beauty of the Forest, the woods and trees and their enchanting solitudes ; but Baden-Baden is favoured in all ways. As a sojourn it is gay and pleasant ; and you may combine duty with amusement by drinking the waters (very brimstone-y some of them are, as though Mephis- topheles had once given rendezvous to Faust here, and had beguiled the time he was kept waiting by stirring them up with his tail), and listening to the band that plays here thrice daily. The Kursaal, or Conversation-house, is a magnificent building, _where balls are held during certain nights of the season. In one Comicooolks (C(O)