Stories for Pleasure and Edification

of the dawn announced the arrival of the sun, then, when the lark sang its first song to the Creator, Adelaide was often already awake, and wandered lonely among leafy paths of wild jasmine, and her heart spoke with the Deity. The term 'Gottheit' (Deity) reflects the Enlightenment and early Romantic tendency to view God through the lens of nature and reason rather than strictly through church dogma.

To sensitive souls The original 'Empfindsamen Seelen' refers to the 18th-century literary movement of 'Empfindsamkeit' or Sensibility, which valued deep emotional responses to nature and morality., the hours of solitude are sacred—then, when nature lies in slumber and the creature is alone with the Creator, that is the hour of self-examination. In the temple of peace is the residence of wisdom—not in the throng of the world, not at court, nor in the noisy madhouse of the philosophers.

Only a quiet heart is receptive to wisdom—the sun is not reflected in the brook that the rain muddies, or that the storm-wind piles into floods—a calm spring is its mirror. Convinced of this truth, Adelaide often indulged in thoughts of sweet melancholy In this period, 'Schwerhmuth' (melancholy) was often seen as a refined, poetic state of mind rather than a purely negative depression.—her heart beat, a tear flowed from her eye—as she cried out: "Ah! Will I then never see virtue without pretense? Ah! How many contradictions do I not find daily among the..."