The Pilgrims of the Rhine | Page 2

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. --Trevylyan and Gertrude

CHAPTER XXVI.
In which the Reader will learn how the Fairies were received by the Sovereigns of the Mines.--The Complaint of the Last of the Fauns.--The Red Huntsman.--The Storm.--Death

CHAPTER XXVII.
Thurmberg.--A Storm upon the Rhine.--The Ruins of Rheinfels.--Peril Unfelt by Love.--The Echo of the Lurlei-berg.--St. Goar.--Kaub, Gutenfels, and Pfalzgrafenstein.--A certain Vastness of Mind in the First Hermits.--The Scenery of the Rhine to Bacharach

CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Voyage to Bingen.--The Simple Incidents in this Tale Excused.--The Situation and Character of Gertrude.--The Conversation of the Lovers in the Tempest.--A Fact Contradicted.--Thoughts occasioned by a Madhouse amongst the most Beautiful Landscapes of the Rhine

CHAPTER XXIX.
Ellfeld.--Mayence.--Heidelberg.--A Conversation between Vane and the German Student.--The Ruins of