the literary pseudonym usually applied to Friedrich Ludwig von Hardenberg, a distinguished philosopher and poet of Germany, who was born at a country house of his family in the county of Mansfeld, in Saxony, on the 2d of May 1772. His father, a frank, rugged, honest German, had spent his early years as a soldier, but was at this time director of the Saxon salt-works. The mother of Novalis was "a pattern of noble piety and Christian mildness," and her son seems to have loved her with the most enthusiastic affection. From both his parents, who were attached to the Herrnhut communion, Novalis inherited that decidedly religious temper which continued to be the ruling principle of his life. In childhood he was very delicate, and was brought up in the most retired manner. He showed no interest in the boisterous sports of youth, and even shunned the society of his fellows. He remained in this dull, dreamy condition until his ninth year, when a dangerous illness shook his faculties from their slumber, and called forth the energies of a genius of uncommon power and originality. His elementary education was now prosecuted with great success; and he displayed an extraordinary fondness for history and poetry. The Tradtionary Tale (Märchen), which he afterwards continued to admire, had at this early stage a peculiar charm for him; and one of his earliest literary endeavours was a composition of this sort, written for the amusement of his brothers and sisters. After a few months at a gymnasium, he repaired to Jena in 1790, where he prosecuted his studies for three years. He then removed with his brother Erasmus to the university of Leipzig, and after spending a season there, went to Wittemberg to complete his education. It seems to have been Jena, however, which exerted the most marked influence over his development. Here he first met Friedrich Schlegel, and it was here he first listened to the lofty eloquence of Fichte. The Wissenschaftstlehre, or Doctrine of Science, of that distinguished thinker, was studied by Novalis with singular avidity. The charm of its refined idealism attracted the sympathies of an intellect of surprising subtlety; the stern grandeur of its morality called forth the enthusiasm of the youthful romanticist; and the burning eloquence and calm dignity of the teacher carried conviction to the heart of the student. The philosophy of Fichte formed accordingly the groundwork of all the subsequent speculations of Novalis. The Kantian distinction, and even occasional antagonism, of the Understanding and the Reason, is carried by him into all departments of mental development—into poetry, virtue, and religion. He learned to despise with the transcendentalists the dull, blind, pedestrianism of the Understanding, and sought to gain the citadel of truth by following the clear, steady light of the higher Reason. The whole of his writings have a constant reference to this specula- After displaying a strong predilection for a military life, his friends succeeded in prevailing on him to follow his father's occupation; and he accordingly removed to Arnstadt in Thuringia in 1794, to train himself for business. Having remained a year there, he was appointed auditor of the department of which his father was director, and took up his residence at Weissenfels. In the year 1797 events occurred which, according to his biographer Tieck, gave a shock to his whole nature, and imparted a gloomy complexion to his thoughts, from which he was not destined to recover. During his residence at Arnstadt he had become enamoured of a fair, delicate German girl, possessed of uncommon attractions, but with health exceedingly fragile. He had hardly known her a year when the chill spring winds came and withered the fair flower; and ere he had time to dry his tears, he had to follow the remains of his brother Erasmus to the grave. It was during this year that the greater number of those remarkable pieces of Novalis, called *Hymns to the Night*, were composed. Not a few of his *Fragments* also belong to the same period.

In 1798 he removed to Freyberg to study mineralogy under the famous Werner. In the mathematical and physical sciences he took an eager interest; and if we may judge from the fragmentary papers which he has left, he seemed to have prosecuted the study on a great and original principle. He put together about this time his unfinished "physical romance" of *Lehringe zu Saiz*, or the Pupils at Sais, so full of strange poetized philosophy and shadowy allegorical allusion. While here he formed another betrothment, destined like the first to be cut short by death. On his return to Jena he made the acquaintance of August Wilhelm Schlegel and Tieck, then engaged in the famous literary campaign in behalf of what is generally known as Romanticism. Tieck "re-awakened poetry in him," he says; and it was in conjunction with these men, whose cause he ardently espoused, that Novalis first presented his thoughts to the world. He contributed his *Blüthensaub*, or Pollen of Flowers, together with numerous poetical pieces, to the *Musen-Almanach* of F. Schlegel; and composed about the same time his *Geistliche Lieder*, or Spiritual Songs, so remarkable for simple sublimity and still, devout pathos. In addition to his passionate love of nature, these were perhaps his highest poetic gifts. In the summer of 1800 we find him living at a solitary spot at the foot of the Kyffhäuser Mountain in Thuringia, busily engaged on his art romance of *Heinrich von Ofterdingen*, designed, as he said, to be an "apotheosis of Poetry." It was never completed, however, and was not long published in its unfinished state. In his prose style he generally aims at simplicity and directness—qualities not always to be found in his poetry. Indeed, it may be questioned whether, with all the wealth of a truly regal genius, he was possessed of the highest faculties of the poet. If in the rich strength of his theosophic mysticism he resembles an oriental, the likeness is increased when we regard the soft passiveness of his mind and character. Carlyle, who calls him the "German Pascal," says, "The chief excellence we have remarked in Novalis is his, to us, truly wonderful subtlety of intellect; his power of intense abstraction, of pursuing the deepest and most evanescent ideas through their thousand complexities, as it were with lynx vision, and to the very limits of human thought." (*Miscellanies*, vol. ii., p. 95.)

In August 1800, while Novalis was preparing for a journey to Freyberg to bring home his betrothed, he was seized with a spitting of blood, which ended in a rapid decline. Hope, gladness, and rich expanding activity had just begun to make life desirable to him, when death came with the spring of 1801, and ended his strange career, at the premature age of twenty-eight. A Life of Novalis, by his friend Tieck, will be found prefixed to