This volume contains but one good story, but that is a truly charming one; “Aslaaga” from the German of La Motte Fouque. This tale combines the high chivalric sentiment which characterizes this author with a poetic meaning almost as deep and sweet as that in Undine. The two Knights, Froda and Edwald, with their noble intelligent rivalry, the devotion of the former to the ideal or heavenly beauty, his waverings, and the tender maternal aid he receives from above, the gradual conquest of the higher over the lower self, the elevation of the knight to the poet, the man to the angel, are embodied in forms of persuasive loveliness and grace. The tale will interest those who like a sweet and solemn strain, and hear something from the nightingale beside the beauty of its note.*
“The Fireside Library . . .” New-York Daily Tribune, 26 July 1845, p. 2.
