On Wednesday, the 30th of June, a new schooner yacht, of 72 tons, was launched from the stocks of Mr. Ring, of Strood, on the River Medway. She was designed by Mr. R. Pemble, built for Charles Appleyard, Esq., and named the Santa Catarina. Her dimensions are, length over all, 75 feet; length between perpendiculars, 60 feet; breadth extreme, 16 feet; depth in hold, 7 feet 10 inches.

H. Bridson, Esq., has disposed of his yacht, the Nimrod, 40 tons, to J. Blewitt, Esq., of Grantham House, Cowes.

The schooner Odalique, 50 tons, has been sold by the Messrs. Ratsey to Mr. Vandeleur, who has changed her name to the Marlet. It may be well for yachtsmen to remember, that once a yacht is registered, that, unless under certain alterations, her name cannot be changed under a heavy penalty.

THE COURTSHIPS AND FLIRTATIONS OF JEAN PAUL

RICHTER.

In the varied experiences of human beings, there are no passages of so universal and intense an interest, as the traits and incidents that appertain to the romantic passion which is the origin of the most intimate relations between man and woman. As Emerson remarks, in his beautiful essay on Love, "What do we wish to know of any worthy person so much as how he has sped in the history of this sentiment?" Yet, as biography is commonly written, we can learn but little, and often nothing, of particulars so exciting to our curiosity, and with which there exists so general and profound a sympathy. The delineation of human fortunes, as far as they are affected by the tender and passionate emotions, is left entirely to fiction; and thus, through the medium of imaginary, and frequently unreal, descriptions, one of the most beautiful phases of our existence is but imperfectly shadowed forth, which might be very effectively, and more instructively, exhibited by the representation of reality. For though we willingly admit fiction to be a suitable vehicle for representing states of private and impassioned feeling, and will acknowledge that when this is done in strict conformity with the laws of our emotional nature, the fabulous plot and incidents are no material impediment to the truth of the representation: we nevertheless hold it to be undeniable, that events and circumstances which are known to have actually occurred have a superior claim to credibility, and carry with them a greater power of conviction and impression, than is possible to anything that is purely imaginary. "Let anyone bethink him," as Carlyle observes, "how impressive the smallest historical fact may become, as contrasted with the grandest fictitious event; what an incalculable force lies in this consideration: The Thing which I here hold imaged in my mind did actually occur; was, in very truth, an element in the system of the All, whereof I, too, form a part; had therefore, and has, through all time, an authentic being; is not a dream, but a reality."

The

Moved by this consideration, it has occurred to us that the courtships and innocent flirtations of Jean Paul Richter, if consecutively related, might form a graceful and interesting love-story; which having the advantage of being true in all its details, might on that account have peculiar attractions, and be not only a sort of novelty in biographic portraiture, but also prove as pleasant a piece of reading as any that could be selected from the most popular and exquisite romances. materials for the delineation are amply provided for us in his biography and letters. An accomplished American lady, Miss E. B. Lee, has furnished us, in her "Life of Richter," with fair translations of these interesting documents; and as they are better translations than we could pretend to make, we propose to use them, as far as they may be available, in the present article.

Like most poetical minds, Richter would seem to have been visited

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with foretastes of the tender passion at a very early age. He was not yet ten years old when he became enamoured of a little village maiden, whom he describes as his first love:

"This," says he, "was a blue-eyed peasant girl of his own age, with a slender form and an oval face, somewhat marked with the small-pox, but with the thousand traits that, like the magic circles of the enchanter's wand, take the heart a prisoner. Auguste, or Augustina, dwelt with her brother Römer, a delicate youth, who was known as a good accountant, and as a good singer in the choir. It did not, indeed, come to a declaration of love on the side of Paul, or it would appear in this division of the readings already printed, but he played his little romance in a lively manner, from a distance, as he sat in the pastor's pew in the church, and she in the seat appropriated to women, apparently near enough to look at each other without being satisfied. And yet this was only the beginning; for when at evening she drove her cow home from the meadow-pasture, he instantly knew the well-remembered sound of the cow-bell, and flew to the court-wall to see her pass, and give her a nod as she went by; then ran again down to the gateway to the speaking-grate-she the nun without, and he the monk within-to thrust his hand through the bars (more he durst not do, on account of the children without), in which there was some little dainty-sugared almonds, or something still more costly-that he had brought for her from the city. Alas! in many summers he did not attain three times to such happiness as this. But he was obliged to devour all the pleasures, and almost all the sorrows, within himself. His almonds, indeed, did not all fall upon stony ground, but in the Eden of his own eyes; for there grew out of them a whole hanginggarden in his imagination, blooming, and full of fragrance, and he walked in it whole weeks long. For pure love will only bestow, and, through making the beloved happy, is happy! And, could it give an eternity of everincreasing happiness, what were more blessed than love?

.

In this focus of love, Paul remained opposite to Augustina, and lived whole years without so much as touching her hand; of a kiss, indeed, he could never dream. If sometimes a homely servant-maid of his parents, whom he did not love, rashly and bashfully laid one upon his lips, soul and body rushed unconsciously and innocently together in that kiss; but the mouth of a beloved, which, at a distance, shone warmly down, like the sun, upon the most inward spiritual love, would have immersed him in the warmest heaven, and left him entranced and evaporating in the glowing ether; and yet it must be confessed, that once or twice in Joditz he was thus entranced. In his thirteenth year, when his father received a much richer parsonage, he, or rather his eyes, were driven two miles distant from his beloved. His father, out of love for his old residence, had taken with him to his richer parish a young tailor, whom he entertained for many weeks. When he returned, our hero furnished him with many pretty potentates, that he had sketched with wax and soot, and, with his colour-box, had coloured after life, to carry to Augustina, with the commission that the knights and princes were made by himself, and he presented them to her as an eternal souvenir."

Another love-passage belonging to the same period need scarcely be alluded to, as he informs us that his passion "endured no longer than dinner-time," and was besides entirely restricted to himself, the young lady knowing nothing of it. We just extract a sentence or two, for the sake of the beauty with which he has clothed the soft remembrance. Speaking of himself still in the third person, he records :

"As he sat, wholly sunk in deep silence, at a respectable table in Koditz,

surrounded with grown-up young people, the above-mentioned young lady sat opposite, and, in appearance, was one of them. There swelled in his heart, as he looked at her, a love inexpressible in sweetness, seemingly inexhaustible-a gushing of the heart, a heavenly annihilation and dissolving of the whole being into her eyes. She said not a word to the enchanted boy, nor he to her. Had she only bowed, or wafted a kiss to the poor parsonageboy, he had passed from heaven to heaven. Nevertheless, there remains the memory of the feeling of the moment, more than of her face, of which he retains nothing but the scars."

This is the second beauty marked with the small-pox that appears in Richter's history; and somewhat later we meet another, of whom we have the following description, as idealized by her lover. Young Jean Paul was now living, still a boy, in his father's second parsonage at Schwarzenbach, on the Saale. Here, for the first time, he had the boldness and the felicity to perpetrate a kiss.

"As in earlier life," he says, on the opposite church-bench, so I could but fall in love with Catherine Bürin, as she sat always above me on the school-bench, her pretty, round, red, small-pox-marked face, her lightning eyes, the pretty hastiness with which she spoke and ran. In the schoolcarnival, that took in the whole forenoon succeeding fast-nights, and consisted in dancing and playing, I had the joy to perform the irregular hop-dance, that preceded the regular, with her. In the play How does your neighbour please you?' where, upon an affirmative answer, they are ordered to kiss, and, upon the contrary, there is a calling out, and in the midst of accollades all change places, I ran always near her. The blows were like gold-beaters', by which the pure gold of my love was beaten out, and a continual change of places, as she always forbade me the court, and I always called her to the court, was managed.

"All these malicious occurrences (desertiones malitiosa) could not deprive me of the blessedness of meeting her daily, when, with her snow-white apron and her snow-white cap, she ran over the long bridge opposite the parsonage window, out of which I was looking. To catch her, not to say, but to give her something sweet-a mouthful of fruit-to run quickly through the parsonage-court down the little steps and arrest her in her flight, my conscience would never permit; but I enjoyed enough to see her from the window upon the bridge, and I think it was near enough for me to stand, as I usually did, with my heart behind a long seeing and hearing trumpet. Distance injures true love less than nearness. Could I, upon the planet Venus, discover the goddess Venus, while in the distance its charms were so enchanting, I should have warmly loved it, and without hesitation chosen to revere it as my morning and evening star.

"In the meantime, I have the satisfaction to draw all those who expect, in Schwarzenbach, a repetition of the Joditz love, from their error, and inform them that it came to something. On a winter evening, when my princess's collection of sweet gifts was prepared, that needed only a receiver, the pastor's son, who, among all my school companions, was the worst, persuaded me, when a visit from the chaplain occupied my father, to leave the parsonage while it was dark, to pass the bridge, and venture, which I had never done, into the house where the beloved dwelt with her poor grandmother, up in a little corner chamber. We entered a little alehouse underneath. Whether Catherine happened to be there, or whether the rascal, under the pretence of a message, allured her down upon the middle of the steps, or, in short, how it happened that I found her there, has become only a dreamy recollection; for the sudden lightning of the present darkened all that went

behind. As violently as if I had been a robber, I first pressed upon her my present of sweetmeats, and then I, who in Joditz never could reach the heaven of a first kiss, and never even dared to touch the beloved hand-I for the first time held a beloved being upon my heart and lips. I have nothing further to say, but that it was the one pearl of a minute, that was never repeated; a whole longing past and a dreaming future were united in one moment, and in the darkness behind my closed eyes the fireworks of a whole life were evolved in a glance. Ah! I have never forgotten it-the ineffaceable moment!

"I returned, like a clairvoyant, from heaven again to earth, and remarked only that, in this second Christmas festival, Ruprecht* did not precede, but followed it; for on my way home I met a messenger coming for me, and was severely scolded for running away. Usually after such warm silver beams of a blessed sun, there falls a closing, stormy gust. What was its effect on me? The stream of words could not drain my paradise; for does it not bloom even to-day around and forth from my pen?

"It was, as I have said, the first kiss, and, as I believe, will be the last ; for I shall not, probably, although she lives yet, journey to Schwarzenbach to give a second. As usual, during my whole Schwarzenbach life, I was perfectly contented with my telegraphic love, which yet sustained and kept itself alive without any answering telegraph. But truly no one could blame her less than I that she was silent at that time, or that she continues so now, after the death of her husband; for later, in stranger loves and hearts, I have always been slow to speak. It did not help me that I stood with ready face and attractive outward appearance; all corporeal charms must be placed over the foil of the spiritual, before they can sufficiently shine, and dazzle, and kindle. But this was the cause of failure in my innocent love-time—that without any intercourse with the beloved, without conversation or introduction, I displayed my whole love bursting from the dry exterior, and stood before her, like the Judas-tree, in full blossom, but without branch or leaf.”

These enamoured ecstacies were too glowing to be otherwise than evanescent. A time arrived, even during his boyhood, when graver things put an end to such delights. Being a lad of genius, and passionately devoted to the acquirements of knowledge, and being, through some offence given to his father, withdrawn from the parish school, he began to employ all his available time in reading. Accordingly, as his biographer informs us, "he found no time and no object to satisfy the wants of the heart, and no food for the imagination. The little, round, red, pock-marked face of the little girl could scarcely have filled his fancy, and all his efforts were directed to the cultivation of the reason and intellect." Years ensued in which hardships began to arise, driving far from him all chances of the luxury of love. In 1779, his sixteenth year, he was placed by his father at the Gymnasium, or town school of Hof, a little city not far from the parsonage of Schwarzenbach. Here he endured various buffetings from unfriendly schoolfellows, along with not unfrequent browbeatings from pedantic and incompetent instructors. For Paul, with his splendid gifts, shot far ahead of their attainments, and unpleasantly unsettled them in their pedantic ways, by his lambent eccentricities of fancy and speculation. His masters taught him little, and even that which they did teach, they,

*

Ruprecht may be called" the Father Nicholas who comes on Christmas Eve and plays all sorts of tricks."-Tr.