The Pilgrims of the Rhine | Page 2

evident, the other simple,--the first seeks
but to illustrate visible nature through the poetry of the affections; the
other is but the narrative of the most real of mortal sorrows, which the
Author attempts to take out of the region of pain by various accessories
from the Ideal. The connecting tale itself is but the string that binds into
a garland the wild-flowers cast upon a grave.

The descriptions of the Rhine have been considered by Germans
sufficiently faithful to render this tribute to their land and their legends
one of the popular guide-books along the course it
illustrates,--especially to such tourists as wish not only to take in with
the eye the inventory of the river, but to seize the peculiar spirit which
invests the wave and the bank with a beauty that can only be made
visible by reflection. He little comprehends the true charm of the Rhine
who gazes on the vines on the hill-tops without a thought of the
imaginary world with which their recesses have been peopled by the
graceful credulity of old; who surveys the steep ruins that overshadow
the water, untouched by one lesson from the pensive morality of Time.
Everywhere around us is the evidence of perished opinions and
departed races; everywhere around us, also, the rejoicing fertility of
unconquerable Nature, and the calm progress of Man himself through
the infinite cycles of decay. He who would judge adequately of a
landscape must regard it not only with the painter's eye, but with the
poet's. The feelings which the sight of any scene in Nature conveys to
the mind--more especially of any scene on which history or fiction has
left its trace--must depend upon our sympathy with those associations
which make up what may be called the spiritual character of the spot. If
indifferent to those associations, we should see only hedgerows and
ploughed land in the battle-field of Bannockburn; and the traveller
would but look on a dreary waste, whether he stood amidst the piles of
the Druid on Salisbury plain, or trod his bewildered way over the broad
expanse on which the Chaldaean first learned to number the stars.
To the former editions of this tale was prefixed a poem on "The Ideal,"
which had all the worst faults of the author's earliest compositions in
verse. The present poem (with the exception of a very few lines) has
been entirely rewritten, and has at least the comparative merit of being
less vague in the thought, and less unpolished in the diction, than that
which it replaces.

CONTENTS.

THE IDEAL WORLD

THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE

CHAPTER I.
In which the Reader is Introduced to Queen Nymphalin

CHAPTER II.
The Lovers

CHAPTER III.
Feelings

CHAPTER IV.
The Maid of Malines

CHAPTER V.
Rotterdam.--The Character of the Dutch.--Their Resemblance to the
Germans.--A Dispute between Vane and Trevylyan, after the manner of
the ancient Novelists, as to which is preferable, the Life of Action, or
the Life of Repose.--Trevylyan's Contrast between Literary Ambition
and the Ambition of Public Life

CHAPTER VI.
Gorcum.--The Tour of the Virtues: a Philosopher's Tale

CHAPTER VII.
Cologne.--The Traces of the Roman Yoke.--The Church of St.
Maria.--Trevylyan's Reflections on the Monastic Life.--The Tomb of
the Three Kings.--An Evening Excursion on the Rhine

CHAPTER VIII.

The Soul in Purgatory; or, Love Stronger than Death

CHAPTER IX.
The Scenery of the Rhine analogous to the German Literary
Genius.--The Drachenfels

CHAPTER X.
The Legend of Roland.--The Adventures of Nymphalin on the Island of
Nonnewerth.--Her Song.--The Decay of the Fairy-Faith in England

CHAPTER XI.
Wherein the Reader is made Spectator with the English Fairies of the
Scenes and Beings that are beneath the Earth

CHAPTER XII.
The Wooing of Master Fox

CHAPTER XIII.
The Tomb of a Father of Many Children

CHAPTER XIV.
The Fairy's Cave, and the Fairy's Wish

CHAPTER XV.
The Banks of the Rhine.--From the Drachenfels to Brohl.--An Incident
that suffices in this Tale for an Epoch

CHAPTER XVI.

Gertrude.--The Excursion to Hammerstein.--Thoughts

CHAPTER XVII.
Letter from Trevylyan to -----

CHAPTER XVIII.
Coblentz.--Excursion to the Mountains of Taunus; Roman Tower in the
Valley of Ehrenbreitstein.--Travel, its Pleasures estimated differently
by the Young and the Old.--The Student of Heidelberg: his Criticisms
on German Literature

CHAPTER XIX.
The Fallen Star; or, the History of a False Religion

CHAPTER XX.
Glenhausen.--The Power of Love in Sanctified Places.--A Portrait of
Frederick Barbarossa.--The Ambition of Men finds no adequate
Sympathy in Women

CHAPTER XXI.
View of Ehrenbreitstein.--A New Alarm in Gertrude's
Health.--Trarbach

CHAPTER XXII.
The Double Life.--Trevylyan's Fate.--Sorrow the Parent of
Fame.--Niederlahnstein.--Dreams

CHAPTER XXIII.
The Life of Dreams

CHAPTER XXIV.
The Brothers

CHAPTER XXV.
The Immortality of the Soul.--A Common Incident not before
Described.