ESTHETIC CONSIDERATIONS. 



313 



the snail, not as the uninviting little creature it would 

 appear to the common eye, but under the light of imagi- 

 nation's ray. We may enter the realms of fantasy, and 

 we shall find it among those intruders which had to be 

 chased from the cradle of the fairy-queen. We shall 

 find it, centuries earlier, in Homer's mock-heroic poem, 

 where the belligerent frogs are represented as using the 

 shells of water-snails for their helmets. But the snail 

 has been raised to a much higher eminence in the poetic 

 sphere. Indeed, could a lonely snail be discovered on 

 the loftiest peak of Teneriffe or Chimborazo, would not 

 the little animal, elated at that extreme height, become 

 a fit object for surprise and wonder, and partake of the 

 sublimity of the situation ? Well supposing only that 

 we pass from the material to the moral world in a simi- 

 lar situation Goethe has placed it in that wild vision of 

 the Walpurgis-night. There, upon the top of the Harz 

 mountains, amidst that enchanted throng and tumul- 

 tuous rabblement of witches, sorcerers, daemons, owls, 

 bats, and all creatures of the night celebrating high 

 festival under the melancholy moon, in the " region of 

 misery and tribulation," did an adventurous and preter- 

 naturally sensitive snail detect the presence and unmask 

 the incognito of no less a person than Mephistopheles 

 himself, who in these words describes the occurrence : 



" Siehst du die Schnecke da ? Sie kommt heran gekrochen ; 



Mit ihrem tastenden Gesicht 

 Hat sie mir schon was abgerochen. 



Wenn ich auch will, verlaiign' ich hier mich nicht." 



This is beyond a doubt the most imposing appearance 

 which the little animal has made in literature. 



The cases above cited, in which the snail appears as 

 actually taking part in the movement of the poem, in 

 which she is, so to speak, one of the characters of the 



