MARY. But surely this is ruin, not caprice?
L. I believe it is in great part misfortune; and we will examine
these crystal troubles in next lecture. But if you want to see the
gracefullest and happiest caprices of which dust is capable, you
must go to the Hartz; not that I ever mean to go there myself, for
I want to retain the romantic feeling about the name; and I have
done myself some harm already by seeing the monotonous and heavy
form of the Brocken from the suburbs of Brunswick. But whether the
mountains be picturesque or not, the tricks which the goblins (as
I am told) teach the crystals in them, are incomparably pretty.
They work chiefly on the mind of a docile, bluish-colored,
carbonate of lime; which comes out of a gray limestone. The
goblins take the greatest possible care of its education, and see
that nothing happens to it to hurt its temper; and when it may be
supposed to have arrived at the crisis which is to a well brought
up mineral, what presentation at court is to a young lady--after
which it is expected to set fashions--there's no end to its pretty
ways of behaving. First it will make itself into pointed darts as
fine as hoarfrost; here, it is changed into a white fur as fine as
silk; here into little crowns and circlets, as bright as silver;
as if for the gnome princesses to wear; here it is in beautiful
little plates, for them to eat off; presently it is in towers
which they might be imprisoned in; presently in caves and cells,
where they may make nun-gnomes of themselves, and no gnome ever
hear of them more; here is some of it in sheaves, like corn; here,
some in drifts, like snow; here, some in rays, like stars: and,
though these are, all of them, necessarily, shapes that the
mineral takes in other places, they are all taken here with such a
grace that you recognize the high caste and breeding of the
crystals wherever you meet them, and know at once they are Hartz-
born.
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