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 the Castle of Heidelberg and its Solitary Habitant
CHAPTER XXX. No Part of the Earth really Solitary.--The Song of the Fairies.--The Sacred Spot.--The Witch of the Evil Winds.--The Spell and the Duty of the Fairies
CHAPTER XXXI. Gertrude and Trevylyan, when the former is awakened to the Approach of Death
CHAPTER XXXII. A Spot to be Buried in
CHAPTER THE LAST The Conclusion of this Tale
THE IDEAL WORLD
I.
THE IDEAL WORLD,--ITS REALM IS EVERYWHERE AROUND US; ITS INHABITANTS ARE THE IMMORTAL PERSONIFICATIONS OF ALL BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS; TO THAT WORLD WE ATTAIN BY THE REPOSE OF THE SENSES.
AROUND "this visible diurnal sphere" There floats a World that girds us like the space; On wandering clouds and gliding beams career Its ever-moving murmurous Populace. There, all the lovelier thoughts conceived below Ascending live, and in celestial shapes. To that bright World, O Mortal, wouldst thou go? Bind but thy senses, and thy soul escapes: To care, to sin, to passion close thine eyes; Sleep in the flesh, and see the Dreamland rise! Hark to the gush of golden waterfalls, Or knightly tromps at Archimagian Walls! In the green hush of Dorian Valleys mark The River Maid her amber tresses knitting; When glow-worms twinkle under coverts dark, And silver clouds o'er summer stars are flitting, With jocund elves invade "the Moone's sphere, Or hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear;"* Or, list! what time the roseate urns of dawn Scatter fresh dews, and the first skylark weaves Joy into song, the blithe Arcadian Faun Piping to wood-nymphs under Bromian leaves, While slowly gleaming through the purple glade Come Evian's panther car, and the pale Naxian Maid.