Gi 'y 
 
KNEBWORTH LIMITED EDITION 
 
 THE 
 
 PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE 
 
 TO WHICH IS PREFIXED 
 
 THE IDEAL WORLD 
 
 THE COMING RACE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD BULWER LYTTON 
 
 (LOUD LYTTON) 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ESTES AND LAURIAT 
 1892 
 
KNEBIVORTH LIMITED EDITION. 
 
 Limited to One Thousand Copies. 
 
 Wo, 595 
 
 J^jZ/at-V^L-^^HW-^- - A^ 
 
 TYPOGRAPHY, ELECTROTYPING, AND 
 PRINTING BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 
 
l-'-iqt 
 
 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE 
 
 iv;5*X;837 
 
TO HENRY LYTTON BULWEK 
 
 Allow me, my dear Brother, to dedicate this Work to you. The 
 greater part of it (namely, the tales which vary and relieve the voyages 
 of Gertrude and Trevylyan) was written in the pleasant excursion we 
 made together some years ago. Among the associations — some sad 
 and some pleasing — connected with the general design, none are so 
 agreeable to me as those that remind me of the friendship subsisting 
 between us, and which, unlike that of near relations in general, has 
 grown stronger and more intimate as our footsteps have receded farther 
 from the fields where we played together in our childhood. I dedicate 
 this Work to you with the more pleasure, not only when I remember 
 that it has always been a favourite with yourself, but when I think that 
 it is one of my writings most liked in foreign countries ; and I may 
 possibly, therefore, have found a record destined to endure the affec- 
 tionate esteem which this Dedication is intended to convey. 
 
 Yours, etc. 
 
 E. L. B. 
 
 London, April 23, 1840. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 Could I prescribe to the critic and to the public, 1 
 would Avisli that this work might be tried by the rules 
 rather of poetry than prose, for according to those rules 
 have been both its conception and its execution ; and I feel 
 that something of sympathy with the author's design is 
 requisite to win indulgence for the superstitions he has 
 incorporated with his tale, for the fioridity of his style, 
 and the redundance of his descriptions. Perhaps, indeed, 
 it would be impossible, in attempting to paint the scenery 
 and embody some of the Legends of the Rhine, not to give 
 (it may be, too loosely) the reins to the imagination, or 
 to escape the influence of that wild German spirit which 
 I have sought to transfer to a colder tongue. 
 
 I have made the experiment of selecting for the main 
 interest of my work the simplest materials, and weaving 
 upon them the ornaments given chiefly to suljjects of a 
 more fanciful nature. I know not how far I have suc- 
 ceeded, but various reasons have conspired to make this 
 the work, above all others that I have written, which has 
 given me the most delight (though not unmixed with 
 melancholy) in producing, and in which my mind for the 
 time has been the most completely absorbed. But the 
 ardour of composition is often disproportioncd to the merit 
 of the work ; and the public sometimes, nor unjustly, 
 avenges itself for that forgctfulncss of its existence which 
 makes the chief charm of an author's solitude, — and the 
 happiest, if not the wisest, inspiration of his dreams. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 With the younger class of my readers this work has 
 had the good fortune to find especial favour; perhaps be- 
 cause it is in itself a collection of the thoughts and senti- 
 ments that constitute the Romance of youth. It has little 
 to do with the positive truths of our actual life, and does 
 not pretend to deal with the larger passions and more 
 stirring interests of our kind. It is but an episode out of 
 the graver epic of human destinies. It requires no ex- 
 planation of its purpose, and no analysis of its story ; the 
 one is evident, the other simple, — the first seeks but to 
 illustrate visible nature through the poetry of the affec- 
 tions ; 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 he made visible by reflection. He little compre- 
 hends 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 grace- 
 ful credulity of old ; who surveys the steep ruins that over- 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 shado\^' the water, untouched by one lesson from the 
 pensive morality of Time. Everywhere around us is the 
 evidence of perished opinions and departed races ; every- 
 where around us, also, the rejoicing fertility of uncon- 
 querable 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 
 Chaldsean 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. 
 
 Ejis, 1849. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 THE IDEAL WORLD I 
 
 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 CILVPTER L 
 lu which the Reader is Introduced to Queen Nymphalin 13 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 The Lovers 19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Feelings 24 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Maid of Malines 28 
 
 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 57 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Gorcum, — The Tour of the Virtues : a Philosoplier's Tale .... 6.5 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Page 
 Cologne. — The Traces of the Roman Yoke. — The Church of St. Maria. 
 
 — Trevylyau's Reflections on the Monastic Life. — The Tomb of 
 
 the Three Kings. — An Evening Excursion on the Rhine .... 76 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Soul in Purgatory ; or, Love Stronger than Death 79 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Scenery of the Rhine analogous to the German Literary Genius. — 
 
 The Drachenfels 84 
 
 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 86 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Wherein the Reader is made Spectator Avith the English Fairies of the 
 
 Scenes and Beings that are beneath the Earth 91 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 The Wooing of Master Fox 95 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 The Tomb of a Father of Many Children 118 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The Fairy's Cave, and the Fairy's Wish 120 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Banks of the Rhine. — From the Drachenfels to Brohl. — An Inci- 
 dent that suffices in this Tale for an Epoch 121 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Gertrude. — The Excursion to Hammerstein. — Thoughts 125 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Letter from Trevylyan to ^27 
 
CONTEXTS. xiii 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. p^^^ 
 
 Cobleutz. — Excursion to the Mountains of Taunus ; Roman Tower in 
 tlie Valley of Ehreubreitstein. — Travel, its Pleasures estimated 
 differently by the Young and the Old. — The Student of Heidel- 
 berg : his Criticisms on German Literature 130 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 The Fallen Star ; or, the History of a False Religion 134 
 
 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 167 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 View of Ehreubreitstein. — A New Alarm in Gertrude's Health. — 
 
 Trarbach 169 
 
 CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 The Double Life. — Trevylyan's Fate. — Sorrow the Parent of Fame. — 
 
 Xiederlahnstein. — Dreams 171 
 
 CHAPTER XXIH. 
 The Life of Dreams 174 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 The Brothers 179 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 The Immortality of the Soul. — A Common Incident not before De- 
 scribed. — Trevylyan and Gertrude 204 
 
 CHAPTER XXVL 
 
 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 207 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. p^^^ 
 
 Thurmberg. — A Storm upon the Rhine. — The Ruius of Rheinfels. — 
 Teril Uufelt by Love. — The Echo of the Luiiei-berg. — St. Goar. — 
 Kaub, Guteufels, and Pfalzgrafenstein — A certain Vastness of 
 Mind in the First Hermits. — The Sceuery of the Rhine to 
 Bacharach 215 
 
 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 219 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 EUfeld. — Mayence. — Heidelberg — A Conversation between Vane 
 and the German Student. — The Ruins of the Cattle of Heidelberg 
 and its Solitary Habitant 225 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 No Part of the Earth really Solitary. — Tlie Song of the Fairies. — 
 The Sacred Spot. —The Witch of the Evil Winds. — The Spell and 
 the Duty of the Fairies 231 
 
 CHAPTER XXXL 
 
 Gertrude and Trevylyan, Mhen the former is awakened to the Approach 
 
 of Death 2-34 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 A Spot to be Buried in 236 
 
 CHAPTER THE LAST 
 The Conclusion of this Tale 238 
 
 THE COMmG RACE 249 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Cologne, Bridge of Boats and Cathedral .... Frotitispiece 
 
 Rotterdam 24 
 
 The Seven Mountains from E,olandseck 84 
 
 Coblentz, Rhine Bridge and Palace 130 
 
 Ehrenbreitsteik 1G9 
 
 St. Goar, the Cat and Rheinfels 216 
 
 Mayence, New Bridge 225 
 
 Heidelberg Castle, Inner Facade, Castle-Yard 231 
 
THE IDEAL WORLD 
 
THE IDEAL WORLD. 
 
 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 murmurou.s Populace. 
 There, all the lovelier thoughts conceived below 
 
 Ascending live, and in celestial shapes. 
 To that bright World, 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 jocand 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, 
 
 * " Midsummer Night's Dream." 
 1 
 
THE IDEAL WORLD. 
 
 While slowly gleaming through the purple glade 
 Come Evian's panther car, and the pale Naxian Maid. 
 
 Such, Ideal World, thy habitants ! 
 
 All the fair children of creative creeds, 
 All the lost tribes of Fantasy are thine, — 
 From antique Saturn in Dodonian haunts. 
 
 Or Pan's first music waked from shepherd reeds, 
 To the last sprite when Heaven's pale lamps decline, 
 Heard wailing soft along the solemn Ehine. 
 
 II. 
 
 OUR DREAMS BELONG TO THE IDEAL. — THE DIVINER LOVE FOR 
 WHICH YOUTH SIGHS NOT ATTAINABLE IN LlfE, BUT THE PUR- 
 SUIT OF THAT LOVE BEYOND THE WORLD OF THE SENSES PURI- 
 FIES THE SOUL AND AWAKES THE GENIUS. — PETRARCH. — DANTE. 
 
 Thine are the Dreams that pass the Ivory Gates, 
 
 With prophet shadows haunting poet eyes! 
 Thine the belov'd illusions youth creates 
 
 From the dim haze of its own happy skies. 
 In vain we pine ; we yearn on earth to win 
 
 The being of the heart, our boyhood's dream. 
 The Psyche and the Eros ne'er have been, 
 
 Save in Olympus, wedded ! As a stream 
 Glasses a star, so life the ideal love ; 
 Eestless the stream below, serene the orb above! 
 Ever the soul the senses shall deceive; 
 Here custom chill, there kinder fate bereave : 
 For mortal lips unmeet eternal vows ! 
 And Eden's flowers for Adam's mournful brows! 
 We seek to make the moment's angel guest 
 
 The household dweller at a human hearth ; 
 We chase the bird of Paradise, whose nest 
 
 Was never found amid the bowers of earth, ^ 
 
 1 According to a belief in the East, which is associated with one of the 
 loveliest and most familiar of Oriental superstitions, the bird of Paradise is 
 never seen to rest upon the earth, and its nest is never to be found. 
 
THE IDEAL WORLD. 
 
 Yet loftier joys the vain pursuit may bring, 
 
 Than sate the senses with the boons of time ; 
 The bird of Heaven hath still an upward wing, 
 
 The steps it lures are still the steps that climb; 
 And in the ascent although the soil be bare, 
 More clear the daylight and more pure the air. 
 Let Petrarch's heart the human mistress lose, 
 He mourns the Laura but to win the Muse. 
 Could all the charms which Georgian maids combine 
 Delight the soul of the dark Florentine, 
 Like one chaste dream of childlike Beatrice 
 Awaiting Hell's dark pilgrim in the skies, 
 Snatched from below to be the guide above. 
 And clothe Keligion in the form of Love? * 
 
 III. 
 
 GENIUS, LIFTING ITS LIFE TO THE IDEAL, BECOMES ITSELF A PURE 
 IDEA : IT MUST COMPREHEND ALL EXISTENCE, ALL HUMAN SINS 
 AND SUFFERINGS ; BUT IN COMPREHENDING, IT TRANSMUTES 
 
 THEM. — THE POET IN HIS TWO-FOLD BEING, THE ACTUAL AND 
 
 THE IDEAL. — THE INFLUENCE OF GENIUS OVER THE STERNEST 
 REALITIES OF EARTH; OVER OUR PASSIONS; WARS AND SUPER- 
 STITIONS. — ITS IDENTITY IS WITH HUMAN PROGRESS. — ITS 
 AGENCY, EVEN WHERE UNACKNOWLEDGED, IS UNIVERSAL. 
 
 Oh, thou true Iris ! sporting on thy bow ^ 
 
 Of tears and smiles ! Jove's herald. Poetry, 
 Thou reflex image of all joy and woe, 
 
 Both fused in light by thy dear fantasy! 
 Lo! from the clay how Genius lifts its life. 
 
 And grows one pure Idea, one calm soul! 
 True, its own clearness must reflect our strife ; 
 
 True, its completeness must comprise our whole : 
 But as the sun transmutes the sullen hues 
 
 Of marsh-grown vapours into vermeil dyes, 
 
 ^ It is supposed by many of the commentators on Dante, that in the form 
 of his lost Beatrice, who guides him in his Vision of Heaven, he allegorizes 
 Religious Faith. 
 
THE IDEAL WORLD. 
 
 And melts them later into twilight dews, 
 
 Shedding on flowers the baptism of the skies ; 
 
 So glows the Ideal in the air we breathe, 
 So from the fumes of sorrow and of sin, 
 
 Doth its warm light in rosy colours wreathe 
 Its playful cloudland, storing balms within. 
 
 Survey the Poet in his mortal mould, 
 
 Man, amongst men, descended from his throne ! 
 The moth that chased the star now frets the fold, 
 
 Our cares, our faults, our follies are his own. 
 Passions as idle, and desires as vain, 
 Vex. the wild heart, and dupe the erring brain. 
 From Freedom's field the recreant Horace flies 
 To kiss the hand by which his country dies ; 
 From Mary's grave the mighty Peasant turns, 
 And hoarse with orgies rings the laugh of Burns. 
 While Rousseau's lips a lackey's vices own, — 
 Lips that could draw the thunder on a throne ! 
 But when from Life the Actual Genius springs, 
 
 When, self-transformed by its own magic rod, 
 It snaps the fetters and expands the wings. 
 
 And drops the fleshly garb that veiled the god. 
 How the mists vanish as the form ascends ! 
 How in its aureole every sunbeam blends ! 
 By the Arch-Brightener of Creation seen. 
 
 How dim the crowns on perishable brows ! 
 The snows of Atlas melt beneath the sheen, 
 
 Through Thebaid caves the rushing splendour flows. 
 Cimmerian glooms with Asian beams are bright, 
 And Earth reposes in a belt of light. 
 Now stern as Vengeance shines the awful form, 
 Armed with the bolt and glowing through the storm; 
 Sets the great deeps of human passion free. 
 And whelms the bulwarks that would breast the sea. 
 Roused by its voice the ghastly Wars arise, 
 Mars reddens earth, the Valkyrs pale the skies; 
 Dim Superstition from her hell escapes, 
 
THE IDEAL WORLD. 
 
 With all lier shadowy brood of monster shapes; 
 
 Here life itself the scowl of Typhon^ takes; 
 
 There Conscience shudders at Alecto's snakes; 
 
 From Gothic graves at midnight yawning wide, 
 
 In gory cerements gibbering spectres glide; 
 
 And where o'er blasted heaths the lightnings flame, 
 
 Black secret hags "do deeds without a name! " 
 
 Yet through its direst agencies of awe, 
 
 Light marks its presence and pervades its law, 
 
 And, like Orion when the storms are loud, 
 
 It links creation while it gilds a cloud. 
 
 By ruthless Thor, free Thought, frank Honour stand, 
 
 Fame's grand desire, and zeal for Fatherland. 
 
 The grim Religion of Barbarian Fear 
 
 With some Hereafter still connects the Here, 
 
 Lifts the gross sense to some spiritual source. 
 
 And thrones some Jove above the Titan Force, 
 
 Till, love completing what in awe began, 
 
 From the rude savage dawns the thoughtful man. 
 
 Then, oh, behold the Glorious comforter! 
 
 Still bright'ning worlds but gladd'ning now the hearth, 
 Or like the lustre of our nearest star. 
 
 Fused in the common atmosphere of earth. 
 It sports like hope upon the captive's chain; 
 Descends in dreams upon the couch of pain ; 
 To wonder's realm allures the earnest child; 
 To the chaste love refines the instinct wild; 
 And as in waters the reflected beam. 
 Still where we turn, glides with us up the stream, 
 And while in truth the whole expanse is bright, 
 Yields to each eye its own fond path of light, — 
 So over life the rays of Genius fall. 
 Give each his track because illuming all. 
 
 ^ The gloomy Typhon of Efjypt assumes many of the mj'stic attributes of 
 the Principle of Life which, in the Grecian Apotheosis of the Indian Bacchus, 
 is represented in so genial a character of exuberant joy and everlasting youth. 
 
THE IDEAL WORLD. 
 IV. 
 
 FORGIVENESS TO THE ERRORS OF OUR BENEFACTORS. 
 
 Hence is that secret pardon we bestow 
 
 In the true instinct of the grateful heart, 
 Upon the Sons of Song. The good they do 
 
 In the clear world of their Uranian art 
 Endures forever; while the evil done 
 
 In the poor drama of their mortal scene, 
 Is but a passing cloud before the sun; 
 
 Space hath no record where the mist hath been. 
 Boots it to us if Shakspeare erred like man? 
 
 Why idly question that most mystic life? 
 Eno' the giver in his gifts to scan; 
 
 To bless the sheaves with which thy fields are rife, 
 Nor, blundering, guess through what obstructive clay 
 The glorious corn-seed struggled up to day. 
 
 THE IDEAL IS NOT CONFINED TO POETS. — ALGERNON SIDNEY REC- 
 OGNIZES HIS IDEAL IN LIBERTY, AND BELIEVES IN ITS TRIUMPH 
 WHERE THE MERE PRACTICAL MAN COULD BEHOLD BUT ITS 
 ruins; YET LIBERTY IN THIS WORLD MUST EVER BE AN IDEAL, 
 AND THE LAND THAT IT PROMISES CAN BE FOUND BUT IN 
 DEATH. 
 
 But not to you alone, Sons of Song, 
 The wings that float the loftier airs along. 
 Whoever lifts us from the dust we are, 
 
 Beyond the sensual to spiritual goals; 
 Who from the Moment and the Self afar 
 
 By deathless deeds allures reluctant souls. 
 Gives the warm life to what the Limner draws, — 
 Plato but thought what godlike Cato was.^ 
 Kecall the Wars of England's giant-born, 
 
 Is Elyot's voice, is Hampden's death in vain? 
 1 What riato thought, and godlike Cato was. — Pope. 
 
THE IDEAL WORLD. 
 
 Have all the meteors of the vernal morn 
 But wasted light upon a frozen main? 
 Where is that child of Carnage, Freedom, flown? 
 The Sybarite lolls upon the martyr's throne. 
 Lewd, ribald jests succeed to solemn zeal; 
 And things of silk to Cromwell's men of steel. 
 Cold are the hosts the tromps of Ireton thrilled, 
 And hushed the senates Vane's large presence tilled. 
 In what strong heart doth the old manhood dwell? 
 Where art thou, Freedom? Look! in Sidney's cell! 
 There still as stately stands the living Truth, 
 Smiling on age as it had smiled on youth. 
 Her forts dismantled, and her shrines o'erthrown, 
 The headsman's block her last dread altar-stone. 
 No sanction left to Reason's vulgar hope. 
 Far from the wrecks expands her prophet's scope. 
 Millennial morns the tombs of Kedron gild. 
 The hands of saints the glorious walls rebuild, — 
 Till each foundation garnished with its gem. 
 High o'er Gehenna flames Jerusalem! 
 thou blood-stained Ideal of the free. 
 Whose breath is heard in clarions, — Liberty ! 
 Sublimer for thy grand illusions past. 
 Thou spring'st to Heaven, — Religion at the last. 
 Alike below, or commonwealths or thrones. 
 Where'er men gather some crushed victim groans ; 
 Only in death thy real form we see. 
 All life is bondage, — souls alone are free. 
 Thus through the waste the wandering Hebrews went. 
 Fire on the march, but cloud upon the tent. 
 At last on Pisgah see the prophet stand. 
 Before his vision spreads the Promised Land; 
 But where revealed the Canaan to his eye? — 
 Upon the mountain he ascends to die. 
 
THE IDEAL WORLD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 YET ALL HAVE TWO ESCAPES INTO THE IDEAL WORLD; NAMELY, 
 MEMORY AND HOPE. — EXAMPLE OF HOPE IN YOUTH, HOWEVER 
 EXCLUDED FROM ACTION AND DESIRE. — NAPOLEON'S SON. 
 
 Yet whatsoever be our bondage here, 
 All have two portals to the phantom sphere. 
 What hath not glided through those gates that ope 
 Beyond the Hour, to Memory or to Hope ! 
 Give Youth the Garden, — still it soars above, 
 Seeks some far glory, some diviner love. 
 Place Age amidst the Golgotha, — its eyes 
 Still quit the graves, to rest upon the skies; 
 And while the dust, unheeded, moulders there. 
 Track some lost angel through cerulean air. 
 
 Lo ! where the Austrian binds, with formal chain, 
 The crownless son of earth's last Charlemagne, — 
 Him, at whose birth laughed all the violet vales 
 
 (While yet unfallen stood thy sovereign star, 
 Lucifer of nations). Hark, the gales 
 
 Swell with the shout from all the hosts, whose war 
 Rended the Alps, and crimsoned Memphian Nile, — 
 
 "Way for the coming of the Conqueror's Son: 
 Woe to the Merchant-Carthage of the Isle ! 
 
 Woe to the Scythian ice-world of the Don ! 
 Thunder Lord, thy Lemnian bolts prepare, 
 The Eagle's eyry hath its eagle heir! " 
 Hark, at that shout from north to south, gray Power 
 
 Quails on its weak, hereditary thrones; 
 And widowed mothers prophesy the hour 
 
 Of future carnage to their cradled sons. 
 What ! shall our race to blood be thus consigned. 
 And Ate claim an heirloom in mankind? 
 Are these red lots unshaken in the urn? 
 Years pass ; approach, pale Questioner, and learn 
 
THE IDEAL WORLD. 
 
 Cliained to his rock, with brows that vainly frown, 
 The fallen Titan sinks in darkness down! 
 And sadly gazing through his gilded grate, 
 Behold the child whose birth was as a fate ! 
 Far from the land in which his life began; 
 Walled from the healthful air of hardy man; 
 Beared by cold hearts, and watched by jealous eyes, 
 His guardians jailers, and his comrades spies. 
 Each trite convention courtly fears inspire 
 To stint experience and to dwarf desire; 
 Narrows the action to a puppet stage. 
 And trains the eaglet to the starling's cage. 
 On the dejected brow and smileless cheek, 
 AVhat weary thought the languid lines bespeak; 
 Till drop by drop, from jaded day to day. 
 The sickly life-streams ooze themselves away. 
 Yet oft in Hop?: a boundless realm was thine, 
 
 That vaguest Infinite, — the Dream of Fame; 
 Son of the sword that first made kings divine. 
 
 Heir to man's grandest royalty, — a Name! 
 Then didst thou burst upon the startled world, 
 And keep the glorious promise of thy birth ; 
 Then were the wings that bear the bolt unfurled, 
 
 A monarch's voice cried, "Place upon the earth! " 
 A new Philippi gained a second Rome, 
 And the Son's sword avenged the greater Caesar's doom. 
 
 VII. 
 
 KXAMPI-E OF MEMORY AS LEADING TO THE IDEAL, — AMIDST LIFE 
 HOWEVER HUMBLE, AND IN A MIND HOWEVER IGNORANT. — THE 
 VILLAGE WIDOW. 
 
 But turn the eye to life's sequestered vale 
 And lowly roofs remote in hamlets green. 
 
 Oft in my boyhood where the moss-grown pale 
 Fenced quiet graves, a female form was seen; 
 
 Each eve she sought the melancholy ground. 
 
10 THE IDEAL WORLD. 
 
 And lingering paused, and wistful looked around. 
 If yet some footstep rustled through the grass, 
 Timorous she shrunk, and watched the shadow pass ; 
 Then, when the spot lay lone amidst the gloom. 
 Crept to one grave too humble for a tomb, 
 There silent bowed her face above the dead. 
 For, if in prayer, the prayer was inly said; 
 Still as the moonbeam, paused her quiet shade, 
 Still as the moonbeam, through the yews to fade. 
 Whose dust thus hallowed by so fond a care? 
 What the grave saith not, let the heart declare. 
 On yonder green two orphan children played; 
 By yonder rill two plighted lovers strayed; 
 In yonder shrine two lives were blent in one. 
 And joy-bells chimed beneath a summer sun. 
 Poor was their lot, their bread in labour found; 
 No parent blessed them, and no kindred owned; 
 They smiled to hear the wise their choice condemn; 
 They loved — they loved — and love was wealth to them! 
 Hark — one short week — again the holy bell ! 
 Still shone the sun; but dirge like boomed the knell, — 
 The icy hand had severed breast from breast; 
 Left life to toil, and summoned Death to rest. 
 Full fifty years since then have passed away. 
 Her cheek is furrowed, and her hair is gray. 
 Yet, when she speaks of Jiim (the times are rare), 
 Hear in her voice how youth still trembles there. 
 The very name of that young life that died 
 Still heaves the bosom, and recalls the bride. 
 Lone o'er the widow's hearth those years have fled, 
 The daily toil still wins the daily bread; 
 No books deck sorrow with fantastic dyes; 
 Her fond romance her woman heart supplies ; 
 And, haply in the few still moments given, 
 (Day's taskwork done), to memory, death, and heaven, 
 To that unuttered poem may belong 
 Thoughts of such pathos as had beggared song. 
 
THE IDEAL WORLD. 11 
 
 VIII. 
 
 HENCE IN HOPE, MEMORY, AND PRAYER, ALL OF US ARE POETS. 
 
 Yes, wliile thou hoi)est, music fills the air, 
 
 While thou rememberest, life reclothes the clod; 
 While thou canst feel the electric chain of prayer, 
 
 Breathe but a thought, and be a soul with God ! 
 Let not these forms of matter bound thine eye. 
 
 He who the vanishing point of Human things 
 Lifts from the landscape, lost amidst the sky, 
 
 Has found the Ideal which the poet sings, 
 Has pierced the pall around the senses thrown, 
 And is himself a poet, though unknown. 
 
 IX. 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE POEM TO THE TALE TO WHICH IT IS PRE- 
 FIXED. — THE RHINE, — ITS IDEAL CHARACTER IN ITS HISTORI- 
 CAL AND LEGENDARY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 Eno' ! — my song is closing, and to thee, 
 
 Land of the North, I dedicate its lay ; 
 As I have done the simple tale to be 
 
 The drama of this prelude ! 
 
 Far away 
 Rolls the swift Rhine beneath the starry ray; 
 But to my ear its haunted waters sigh; 
 Its moonlight mountains glimmer on my eye ; 
 On wave, on marge, as on a wizard's glass, 
 Imperial ghosts in dim procession pass ; 
 Lords of the wild, the first great Father-men, 
 Their fane the hill-top, and their home the glen; 
 Frowning they fade ; a bridge of steel appears 
 With frank-eyed Csesar smiling through the spears; 
 The march moves onwards, and the mirror brings 
 The Gothic crowns of Carlovingian kings : 
 Vanished alike! The Hermit rears his Cross, 
 And barbs neigh shrill, and plumes in tumult toss, 
 
12 THE IDEAL WORLD. 
 
 While (knighthood's sole sweet conquest from the Moor) 
 Sings to Arabian lutes the Tourbadour. 
 
 Not yet, not yet; still glide some lingering shades, 
 Still breathe some murmurs as the starlight fades, 
 Still from her rock I hear the Siren call. 
 And see the tender ghost in Koland's mouldering hall! 
 
 X. 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE POEM CONTINUED. — THE IDEAL LENDS ITS 
 AID TO THE MOST FAMILIAR AND THE MOST ACTUAL SORROW OF 
 LIFE. — FICTION COMPARED TO SLEEP, — IT STRENGTHENS WHILE 
 IT SOOTHES. 
 
 Trite were the tale I tell of love and doom, 
 
 (Whose life hath loved not, whose not mourned a tomb?) 
 
 But fiction draws a poetry from grief. 
 
 As art its healing from the withered leaf. 
 
 Play thou, sweet Fancy, round the sombre truth. 
 
 Crown the sad Genius ere it lower the torch! 
 When death the altar and the victim youth. 
 
 Flutes fill the air, and garlands deck the porch. 
 As down the river drifts the Pilgrim sail, 
 Clothe the rude hill-tops, lull the Northern gale; 
 With childlike lore the fatal course beguile, 
 And brighten death with Love's untiring smile. 
 Along the banks let fairy forms be seen 
 " By fountain clear, or spangled starlike sheen. " i 
 Let sound and shape to which the sense is dull 
 Haunt the soul opening on the Beautiful. 
 And when at length, the symbol voyage done. 
 Surviving Grief shrinks lonely from the sun. 
 By tender types show Grief what memories bloom 
 From lost delight, what fairies guard the tomb. 
 Scorn not the dream, world- worn ; pause a while. 
 New strength shall nerve thee as the dreams beguile. 
 Stung by the rest, less far shall seem the goal ! 
 As sleep to life, so fiction to the soul. 
 
 1 " Midsummer Niglit's Dream." 
 
THE PILGKIMS OF THE EHINE 
 
THE 
 
 PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO QUEEN 
 NYMPHALIN. 
 
 In one of those green woods which belong so peculiarly to 
 our island (for the Continent has its forests, but England its 
 woods) there lived, a short time ago, a charming little fairy 
 called Nymphalin. I believe she is descended from a younger 
 branch of the house of Mab; but perhaps that may only be a 
 genealogical fable, for your fairies are very susceptible to the 
 pride of ancestry, and it is impossible to deny that they fall 
 somewhat reluctantly into the liberal opinions so much in 
 vogue at the present day. 
 
 However that may be, it is quite certain that all the cour- 
 tiers in Nymphalin's domain (for she was a queen fairy) made 
 a point of asserting her right to this illustrious descent; and 
 accordingly she quartered the Mab arms with her own, — three 
 acorns vert, with a grasshopper rampant. It was as merry a 
 little court as could possibly be conceived, and on a fine mid- 
 summer night it would have been worth while attending the 
 queen's balls; that is to say, if you could have got a ticket, — 
 a favour not obtained without great interest. 
 
 But, unhappily, until both men and fairies adopt Mr. 
 Owen's proposition, and live in parallelograms, they will 
 always be the victims of ennui. And Nymphalin, who had 
 been disappointed in love, and was still unmarried, had for 
 the last five or six months been exceedingly tired even of giv- 
 
16 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 ing balls. She yawned very frequently, and consequently 
 yawning became a fashion. 
 
 "But why don't we have some new dances, my Pipalee?" 
 said Nymphalin to her favourite maid of honour; "these 
 waltzes are very old-fashioned." 
 
 "Very old-fashioned," said Pipalee. 
 
 The queen gaped, and Pipalee did the same. 
 
 It was a gala night ; the court was held in a lone and beau- 
 tiful hollow, with the wild brake closing round it on every 
 side, so that no human step could easily gain the spot. Wher- 
 ever the shadows fell upon the brake a glow-worm made a 
 point of exhibiting itself, and the bright August moon sailed 
 slowly above, pleased to look down upon so charming a scene 
 of merriment ; for they wrong the moon who assert that she 
 has an objection to mirth, — with the mirth of fairies she has 
 all possible sympathy. Here and there in the thicket the 
 scarce honeysuckles — in August honeysuckles are somewhat 
 out of season — hung their rich festoons, and at that moment 
 they were crowded with the elderly fairies, who had given up 
 dancing and taken to scandal. Besides the honeysuckle you 
 might see the hawkweed and the white convolvulus, varying 
 the soft verdure of the thicket; and mushrooms in abundance 
 had sprung up in the circle, glittering in the silver moon- 
 light, and acceptable beyond measure to the dancers: every 
 one knows how agreeable a thing tents are in ^fete champetre ! 
 I was mistaken in saying that the brake closed the circle en- 
 tirely round; for there was one gap, scarcely apparent to mor- 
 tals, through which a fairy at least might catch a view of a 
 brook that was close at hand, rippling in the stars, and 
 checkered at intervals by the rich weeds floating on the 
 surface, interspersed with the delicate arrowhead and the 
 silver water-lily. Then the trees themselves, in their prodi- 
 gal variety of hues, — the blue, the purple, the yellowing 
 tint, the tender and silvery verdure, and the deep mass of 
 shade frowning into black ; the willow, the elm, the ash, the 
 fir, and the lime, "and, best of all. Old England's haunted 
 oak; " these hues were broken again into a thousand minor 
 and subtler shades as the twinkling stars pierced the foliage, 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 17 
 
 or tlie moon slept with a richer light upon some favoured 
 glade. 
 
 It was a gala night; the elderly fairies, as 1 said before, 
 •were chatting among the honeysuckles ; the young were flirt- 
 ing, and dancing, and making love; the middle-aged talked 
 politics under the mushrooms; and the queen herself and 
 half-a-dozen of her favourites were yawning their pleasure 
 from a little mound covered with the thickest moss. 
 
 " It has been very dull, madam, ever since Prince Fayzen- 
 heim left us," said the fairy Nip. 
 
 The queen sighed. 
 
 " How handsome the prince is ! " said Pipalee. 
 
 The queen blushed. 
 
 " He wore the prettiest dress in the world ; and what a mus- 
 tache ! " cried Pipalee, fanning herself with her left wing. 
 
 " He was a coxcomb, " said the lord treasurer, sourly. The 
 lord treasurer was the honestest and most disagreeable fairy 
 at court; he was an admirable husband, brother, son, cousin, 
 uncle, and godfather, — it was these virtues that had made 
 him a lord treasurer. Unfortunately they had not made him 
 a sensible fairy. He was like Charles the Second in one re- 
 spect, for he never did a wise thiug; but he was not like him 
 in another, for he very often said a foolish one. 
 
 The queen frowned. 
 
 " A young prince is not the worse for that, " retorted Pipa- 
 lee. " Heigho ! does your Majesty think his Highness likely 
 to return? " 
 
 "Don't tease me," said Nymphalin, pettishly. 
 
 The lord treasurer, by way of giving the conversation an 
 agreeable turn, reminded her Majesty that there was a prodi- 
 gious accumulation of business to see to, especially that diffi- 
 cult affair about the emmet-wasp loan. Her Majesty rose, and 
 leaning on Pipalee's arm, walked down to the supper tent. 
 
 "Pray," said the fairy Trip to the fairy Nip, "what is all 
 this talk about Prince Fayzenheim? Excuse my ignorance; 
 I am only just out, your know." 
 
 "Why," answered Nip, a young courtier, not a marrying 
 fairy, but very seductive, " the story runs thus : Last summer 
 
 2 
 
18 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 a foreigner visited us, calling himself Prince Fayzenheim : 
 one of your German fairies, 1 fancy ; no great things, but an 
 excellent waltzer. He wore long spurs, made out of the 
 stings of the horse-flies in the Black Forest; his cap sat on 
 one side, and his mustachios curled like the lip of the dragon- 
 flower. He was on his travels, and amused himself by mak- 
 ing love to the queen. You can't fancy, dear Trip, how fond 
 she was of hearing him tell stories about the strange creatures 
 of Germany, — about wild huntsmen, water-sprites, and a pack 
 of such stuff," added Nip, contemptuously, for Nip was a 
 freethinker. 
 
 "In short?" said Trip. 
 
 " In short, she loved, " cried Nip, with a theatrical air. 
 
 "And the prince?" 
 
 " Packed up his clothes, and sent on his travelling-carriage, 
 in order that he might go at his ease on the top of a stage- 
 pigeon; in short — as you say — in short, he deserted the 
 queen, and ever since she has set the fashion of yawning." 
 
 "It was very naughty in him," said the gentle Trip. 
 
 "Ah, my dear creature," cried Nip, "if it had been you to 
 whom he had paid his addresses ! " 
 
 Trip simpered, and the old fairies from their seats in the 
 honeysuckles observed she was "sadly conducted;" but the 
 Trips had never been too respectable. 
 
 Meanwhile the queen, leaning on Pipalee, said, after a 
 short pause, "Do you know I have formed a plan! " 
 
 "How delightful! " cried Pipalee. "Another gala! " 
 
 "Pooh, surely even you must be tired with such levities: 
 the spirit of the age is no longer frivolous ; and I dare say as 
 the march of gravity proceeds, we shall get rid of galas alto- 
 gether." The queen said this with an air of inconceivable wis- 
 dom, for the " Society for the Diffusion of General Stupefaction " 
 had been recently established among the fairies, and its tracts 
 had driven all the light reading out of the market. "The 
 Penny Proser " had contributed greatly to the increase of knowl- 
 edge and yawning, so visibly progressive among the courtiers. 
 
 "No," continued Nymphalin; "I have thought of something 
 better than galas. Let us travel! " 
 
THE PILGPwIMS OF THE RHINE. 19 
 
 Pipalee clasped her hands in ecstasy. 
 
 " Where shall we travel? " 
 
 "Let us go up the lUiine," said the queen, turning away 
 her head. *'We shall be amazingly welcomed; there are 
 fairies without number all the way by its banks, and various 
 distant connections of ours whose nature and properties will 
 afford interest and instruction to a philosophical mind." 
 
 "Number Nip, for instance," cried the gay Pipalee. 
 
 "The Red Man! " said the graver Nymphalin. 
 
 " Oh, my queen, what an excellent scheme ! " and Pipalee 
 was so lively during the rest of the night that the old fairies 
 in the honeysuckle insinuated that the lady of honour had 
 drunk a buttercup too much of the Maydew. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LOVERS. 
 
 I WISH only for such readers as give themselves heart and 
 soul up to me, — if they begin to cavil I have done with them; 
 their fancy should put itself entirely under my management; 
 and, after all, ought they not to be too glad to get out of this 
 hackneyed and melancholy world, to be run away with by an 
 author who promises them something new? 
 
 From the heights of Bruges, a Mortal and his betrothed 
 gazed upon the scene below. They saw the sun set slowly 
 amongst purple masses of cloud, and the lover turned to his 
 mistress and sighed deeply; for her cheek was delicate in its 
 blended roses, beyond the beauty that belongs to the hues of 
 health ; and when he saw the sun sinking from the world, the 
 thought came upon him that she was his sun, and the glory 
 that she shed over his life might soon pass away into the 
 bosom of the "ever-during Dark." But against the clouds 
 rose one of the many spires that characterize the town of 
 Bruges; and on that spire, tapering into heaven, rested the 
 
20 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 eyes of Gertrude Vane. The different objects that caught the 
 gaze of each was emblematic both of the different channel of 
 their thoughts and the different elements of their nature : he 
 thought of the sorrow, she of the consolation; his heart 
 prophesied of the passing away from earth, hers of the as- 
 cension into heaven. The lower part of the landscape was 
 wrapped in shade ; but just where the bank curved round in 
 a mimic bay, the waters caught the sun's parting smile, and 
 rippled against the herbage that clothed the shore, with a 
 scarcely noticeable wave. There are two of the numerous 
 mills which are so picturesque a feature of that country, 
 standing at a distance from each other on the rising banks, 
 their sails perfectly still in the cool silence of the evening, 
 and adding to the rustic tranquillity which breathed around. 
 For to me there is something in the still sails of one of those 
 inventions of man's industry peculiarly eloquent of repose: 
 the rest seems typical of the repose of our own passions, 
 short and uncertain, contrary to their natural ordination ; and 
 doubly impressive from the feeling which admonishes us how 
 precarious is the stillness, how utterly dependent on every 
 wind rising at any moment and from any quarter of the 
 heavens! They saw before them no living forms, save of one 
 or two peasants yet lingering by the water-side. 
 
 Trevylyan drew closer to his Gertrude; for his love was 
 inexpressibly tender, and his vigilant anxiety for her made 
 his stern frame feel the first coolness of the evening even be- 
 fore she felt it herself. 
 
 "Dearest, let me draw your mantle closer round you," 
 
 Gertrude smiled her thanks. 
 
 " I feel better than I have done for weeks, " said she ; " and 
 when once we get into the Rhine, you will see me grow so 
 strong as to shock all your interest for me." 
 
 " Ah, would to Heaven my interest for you maj^ be put to 
 such an ordeal ! " said Trevylyan ; and they turned slowly to 
 the inn, where Gertrude's father already awaited them. 
 
 Trevylyan was of a wild, a resolute, and an active nature. 
 Thrown on the world at the age of sixteen, he had passed his 
 youth in alternate pleasure, travel, and solitary study. At the 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 21 
 
 age in which manhood is least susceptible to caprice, and most 
 perhaps to passion, he fell in love with the loveliest person 
 that ever dawned upon a poet's vision. I say this without 
 exaggeration, for Gertrude Vane's was indeed the beauty, but 
 the perishable beauty, of a dream. It happened most singu- 
 larly to Trevylyan (but he was a singular man), that being 
 naturally one whose affections it was very difficult to excite, 
 he should have fallen in love at first sight with a person 
 whose disease, already declared, would have deterred any 
 other heart from risking its treasures on a bark so utterly 
 unfitted for the voyage of life. Consumption, but consump- 
 tion in its most beautiful shape, had set its seal upon Ger- 
 trude Vane, when Trevylyan first saw her, and at once loved. 
 He knew the danger of the disease ; he did not, except at in- 
 tervals, deceive himself; he wrestled against the new passion: 
 but, stern as his nature was, he could not conquer it. He 
 loved, he confessed his love, and Gertrude returned it. 
 
 In a love like this, there is something ineffably beautiful, — 
 it is essentially the poetry of passion. Desire grows hallowed 
 by fear, and, scarce permitted to indulge its vent in the com- 
 mon channel of the senses, breaks forth into those vague 
 yearnings, those lofty aspirations, which pine for the Bright, 
 the Far, the Unattained. It is "the desire of the moth for 
 the star; " it is the love of the soul! 
 
 Gertrude was advised by the faculty to try a southern cli- 
 mate; but Gertrude was the daughter of a German mother, 
 and her young fancy had been nursed in all the wild legends 
 and the alluring visions that belong to the children of the 
 Rhine. Her imagination, more romantic than classic, yearned 
 for the vine-clad hills and haunted forests which are so fer- 
 tile in their spells to those who have once drunk, even spar- 
 ingly, of the Literature of the North. Her desire strongly 
 expressed, her declared conviction that if any change of 
 scene could yet arrest the progress of her malady it would be 
 the shores of the river she had so longed to visit, prevailed 
 with her physicians and her father, and they consented to 
 that pilgrimage along the Rhine on which Gertrude, her 
 father, and her lover were now bound. 
 
22 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 It was by the green curve of the banks which the lovers 
 saw from the heights of Bruges that our fairy travellers met. 
 They were reclining on the water-side, playing at dominos 
 with eye-bright and the black specks of the trefoil ; namely, 
 Pipalee, Nip, Trip, and the lord treasurer (for that was all 
 the party selected by the queen for her travelling cortege)^ 
 and waiting for her Majesty, who, being a curious little elf, 
 had gone round the town to reconnoitre. 
 
 "Bless me! " said the lord treasurer; " what a mad freak is 
 this! Crossing that immense pond of water! And was there 
 ever such bad grass as this? One may see that the fairies 
 thrive ill here." 
 
 "You are always discontented, my lord," said Pipalee; 
 " but then you are somewhat too old to travel, — at least, un- 
 less you go in your nutshell and four." 
 
 The lord treasurer did not like this remark, so he muttered 
 a peevish pshaw, and took a pinch of honeysuckle dust to 
 console himself for being forced to put up with so much 
 frivolity. 
 
 At this moment, ere the moon was yet at her middest 
 height, Nymphalin joined her subjects. 
 
 "I have just returned," said she, with a melancholy expres- 
 sion on her countenance, "from a scene that has almost re- 
 newed in me that sympathy with human beings which of late 
 years our race has well-nigh relinquished. 
 
 "I hurried through the town without noticing much food 
 for adventure. I paused for a moment on a fat citizen's pil- 
 low, and bade him dream of love. He woke in a fright, and 
 ran down to see that his cheeses were safe. I swept with a 
 light wing over a politician's eyes, and straightway he dreamed 
 of theatres and music. I caught an undertaker in his first 
 nap, and I have left him whirled into a waltz. For what 
 would be sleep if it did not contrast life? Then I came to a 
 solitary chamber, in which a girl, in her tenderest youth, 
 knelt by the bedside in prayer, and I saw that the death- 
 spirit had passed over her, and the blight was on the leaves 
 of the rose. The room was still and hushed, the angel of 
 Purity kept watch there. Her heart was full of love, and yet 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 23 
 
 of holy thoughts, and I bade her dream of the long life denied 
 to her, — of a happy home, of the kisses of her young lover, 
 of eternal faith, and unwaning tenderness. Let her at least 
 enjoy in dreams what Fate has refused to Truth! And, pass- 
 ing from the room, I found her lover stretched in his cloak 
 beside the door; for he reads with a feverish and desperate 
 prophecy the doom that waits her ; and so loves he the very 
 air she breathes, the very ground she treads, that when she 
 has left his sight he creeps, silently and unknown to her, to 
 the nearest spot hallowed by her presence, anxious that while 
 yet she is on earth not an hour, not a moment, should be 
 wasted upon other thoughts than those that belong to her; 
 and feeling a security, a fearful joy, in lessening the distance 
 that now only momentarily divides them. And that love 
 seemed to me not as the love of the common world, and I 
 stayed my wings and looked upon it as a thing that centuries 
 might pass and bring no parallel to, in its beauty and its mel- 
 ancholy truth. But I kept away the sleep from the lover's 
 eyes, for well I knew that sleep was a tyrant, that shortened 
 the brief time of waking tenderness for the living, yet spared 
 him; and one sad, anxious thought of her was sweeter, in 
 spite of its sorrow, than the brightest of fairy dreams. So I 
 left him awake, and watching there through the long night, 
 and felt that the children of earth have still something that 
 unites them to the spirits of a finer race, so long as they re- 
 tain amongst them the presence of real love ! " 
 
 And oh ! is there not a truth also in our fictions of the Un- 
 seen World? Are there not yet bright lingerers by the forest 
 and the stream? Do the moon and the soft stars look out 
 on no delicate and winged forms bathing in their light? Are 
 the fairies and the invisible hosts but the children of our 
 dreams, and not their inspiration? Is that all a delusion 
 which speaks from the golden page? And is the world only 
 given to harsh and anxious travellers that walk to and fro in 
 pursuit of no gentle shadows? Are the chimeras of the pas- 
 sions the sole spirits of the universe? No! while my remem- 
 brance treasures in its deepest cell the image of one no more, 
 — one who was " not of the earth, earthy ; " one in whom 
 
24 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 love was the essence of thoughts divine; one whose shape and 
 mould, whose heart and genius, would, had Poesy never be- 
 fore dreamed it, have called forth the first notion of spirits 
 resembling mortals, but not of them, — no, Gertrude! while I 
 remember you, the faith, the trust in brighter shapes and 
 fairer natures than the world knows of, comes clinging to my 
 heart; and still will I think that Fairies might have watched 
 over your sleep and Spirits have ministered to your dreams. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FEELINGS. 
 
 Gertrude and her companions proceeded by slow and, to 
 her, delightful stages to Rotterdam. Trevylyan sat by her 
 side, and her hand was ever in his; and when her delicate 
 frame became sensible of fatigue, her head drooped on his 
 shoulder as its natural resting-place. Her father was a man 
 who had lived long enough to have encountered many reverses 
 of fortune, and they had left him, as I am apt to believe long 
 adversity usually does leave its prey, somewhat chilled and 
 somewhat hardened to aftection; passive and quiet of hope, 
 resigned to the worst as to the common order of events, and 
 expecting little from the best, as an unlooked-for incident in 
 the regularity of human afflictions. He was insensible of his 
 daughter's danger, for he was not one whom the fear of love 
 endows with prophetic vision; and he lived tranquilly in the 
 present, without asking what new misfortune awaited him in 
 the future. Yet he loved his child, his only child, with what- 
 ever of affection was left him by the many shocks his heart 
 had received; and in her approaching connection with one 
 rich and noble as Trevylyan, he felt even something border- 
 ing upon pleasure. Lapped in the apathetic indifference of 
 his nature, he leaned back in the carriage, enjoying the bright 
 weather that attended their journey, and sensible — for he 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 25 
 
 ■was one of fine and cultivated taste — of whatever beauties of 
 nature or remains of art varied their course. A companion of 
 this sort was the most agreeable that two persons never need- 
 ing a third could desire; he left them undisturbed to the 
 intoxication of their mutual presence; he marked not the 
 interchange of glances; he listened not to the whisper, the 
 low delicious whisper, with which the heart speaks its sym- 
 pathy to heart. He broke not that charmed silence which 
 falls over us when the thoughts are full, and words leave 
 nothing to explain; that repose of feeling; that certainty that 
 we are understood without the effort of words, which makes 
 the real luxury of intercourse and the true enchantment of 
 travel. What a memory hours like these bequeath, after we 
 have settled down into the calm occupation of common life! 
 How beautiful, through the vista of years, seems that brief 
 moonlight track upon the waters of our youth ! 
 
 And Trevylyan's nature, which, as I have said before, was 
 naturally hard and stern, which was hot, irritable, ambitious, 
 and prematurely tinctured with the policy and lessons of the 
 world, seemed utterly changed by the peculiarities of his love. 
 Every hour, every moment was full of incident to him; every 
 look of Gertrude's was entered in the tablets of his heart; so 
 that his love knew no languor, it required no change : he was 
 absorbed in it, — it was himself! And he was soft, and watch- 
 ful as the step of a mother by the couch of her sick child; 
 the lion within him was tamed by indomitable love; the sad- 
 ness, the presentiment, that was mixed with all his passion 
 for Gertrude, filled him too with that poetry of feeling which 
 is the result of thoughts weighing upon us, and not to be ex- 
 pressed by ordinary language. In this part of their journey, 
 as I find by the date, were the following lines written ; they 
 are to be judged as the lines of one in whom emotion and truth 
 were the only inspiration: — 
 
 As leaves left darkling in the flush of day, 
 
 When glints the glad sun checkering o'er the tree, 
 
 I see the green earth brightening in the ray, 
 Which only casts a shadow upon me ! 
 
26 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 What are the beams, the flowers, the glory, all 
 Life's glow and gloss, the music and the bloom, 
 
 When every sun but speeds the Paternal Pull, 
 And Time is Deatli that dallies with the Tomb ? 
 
 And yet — oh yet, so young, so pure ! — the while 
 
 Fresh laugh the rose-hues round youth's morning sky. 
 
 That voice, those eyes, the deep love of that smile. 
 Are they not soul — all soul — and can they die 1 
 
 Are there the words " No More " for thoughts like ours 1 
 Must the bark sink upon so soft a wave ? 
 
 Hath the short summer of thy life no flowers 
 But those which bloom above thine early grave ■? 
 
 O God ! and what is life, that I should live ? 
 
 (Hath not the world enow of common clay "?) 
 And she — the Rose — whose life a soul could give 
 
 To the void desert, sigh its sweets away f 
 
 And I that love thee thus, to whom the air. 
 
 Blest by thy breath, makes heaven where'er it be, 
 
 Watch thy cheek wane, and smile away despair. 
 Lest it should dim one hour yet left to Thee. 
 
 Still let me conquer self ; oh, still conceal 
 By the smooth brow the snake that coils below ; 
 
 Break, break my heart ! it comforts yet to feel 
 That she dreams on, unwakened by my woe ! 
 
 Hushed, where the Star's soft angel loves to keep 
 Watch o'er their tide, the morning waters roll; 
 
 So glides my spirit, — darkness in the deep. 
 But o'er the wave the presence of thy soul ! 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 27 
 
 Gertrude had not as yet the presentiments that filled the 
 soul of Trevylyan. She thought too little of herself to know 
 her danger, and those hours to her were hours of unniingled 
 sweetness. Sometimes, indeed, the exhaustion of her disease 
 tinged her spirits with a vague sadness, an abstraction came 
 over her, and a languor she vainly struggled against. These 
 fits of dejection and gloom touched Trevylyan to the quick; 
 his eye never ceased to Avatch them, nor his heart to soothe. 
 Often when he marked them, he sought to attract her atten- 
 tion from what he fancied, though erringly, a sympathy with 
 his own forebodings, and to lead her young and romantic im- 
 agination through the temporary begviilements of fiction ; for 
 Gertrude was yet in the first bloom of youth, and all the dews 
 of beautiful childhood sparkled freshly from the virgin blos- 
 soms of her mind. And Trevylyan, who had passed some of 
 his early years among the students of Leipsic, and was deeply 
 versed in the various world of legendary lore, ransacked his 
 memory'' for such tales as seemed to him most likely to win her 
 interest; and often with false smiles entered into the playful 
 tale, or oftener, with more faithful interest, into the graver 
 legend of trials that warned yet beguiled them from their own. 
 Of such tales I have selected but a few ; I know not that they 
 are the least unworthy of repetition, — they are those which 
 many recollections induce me to repeat the most willingly. 
 Gertrude loved these stories, for she had not yet lost, by the 
 coldness of the world, one leaf from that soft and wild ro- 
 mance which belonged to her beautiful mind ; and, more than 
 all, she loved the sound of a voice which every day became 
 more and more musical to her ear. "Shall I tell you," said 
 Trevylyan, one morning, as he observed her gloomier mood 
 stealing over the face of Gertrude, — "shall I tell you, ere yet 
 we pass into the dull land of Holland, a story of Malines, 
 whose spires we shall shortly see?" Gertrude's face bright- 
 ened at once, and as she leaned back in the carriage as it 
 whirled rapidly along, and fixed her deep blue eyes on 
 Trevylyan, he began the following tale. 
 
28 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE MAID OF MALIXES. 
 
 It was noonday in the town of Malines, or Mechlin, as 
 the English usually term it; the Sabbath bell had summoned 
 the inhabitants to divine worship; and the crowd that had loi- 
 tered round the Church of St. Rembauld had gradually emptied 
 itself within the spacious aisles of the sacred edifice. 
 
 A young man was standing in the street, with his eyes bent 
 on the ground, and apparently listening for some sound; for 
 without raising his looks from the rude pavement, he turned 
 to every corner of it with an intent and anxious expression of 
 countenance. He held in one hand a staif, in the other a 
 long slender cord, the end of which trailed on the ground; 
 every now and then he called, with a plaintive voice, *' Fido, 
 Eido, come back! Why hast thou deserted me?" Fido re- 
 turned not; the dog, wearied of confinement, had slipped from 
 the string, and was at play with his kind in a distant quarter 
 of the town, leaving the blind man to seek his way as he 
 might to his solitary inn. 
 
 By and by a light step passed through the street, and the 
 young stranger's face brightened. 
 
 " Pardon me, " said he, turning to the spot where his quick 
 ear had caught the sound, ''and direct me, if you are not 
 much pressed for a few moments' time, to the hotel 'Mortier 
 d'Or.'" 
 
 It was a young woman, whose dress betokened that she be- 
 longed to the middling class of life, whom he thus addressed. 
 "It is some distance hence, sir," said she; "but if you con- 
 tinue your way straight on for about a hundred yards, and 
 then take the second turn to your right hand — '" 
 
 "Alas! " interrupted the stranger, with a melancholy smile, 
 "your direction will avail me little; my dog has deserted me, 
 and I am blind ! " 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 29 
 
 There was something in these words, and in the stranger's 
 voice, which went irresistibly to the heai-t of the young 
 woman. "Pray forgive me," she said, almost with tears iu 
 her eyes, " I did not perceive your — " misfortune, she was 
 about to say, but she checked herself with an instinctive deli- 
 cacy. "Lean upon me, I will conduct you to the door; nay, 
 sir," observing that he hesitated, "I have time enough to 
 spare, I assure you." 
 
 The stranger placed his hand on the young woman's arm; 
 and though Lucille was naturally so bashful that even her 
 mother would laughingly reproach her for the excess of a 
 maiden virtue, she felt not the least pang of shame, as she 
 found herself thus suddenly walking through the streets of 
 Malines along with a young stranger, whose dress and air be- 
 tokened him of rank superior to her own. 
 
 "Your voice is very gentle," said he, after a pause; "and 
 that," he added, with a slight sigh, "is the only criterion by 
 which I know the young and the beautiful ! " Lucille now 
 blushed, and with a slight mixture of pain in the blush, for 
 she knew well that to beauty she had no pretension. "Are 
 you a native of this town? " continued he. 
 
 "Yes, sir; my father holds a small office in the customs, 
 and my mother and I eke out his salary by making lace. 
 We are called poor, but we do not feel it, sir." 
 
 "You are fortunate! there is no wealth like the heart's 
 wealth, — content," answered the blind man, mournfully. 
 
 "And, monsieur," said Lucille, feeling angry with herself 
 that she had awakened a natural envy in the stranger's mind, 
 and anxious to change the subject — " and, monsieur, has he 
 been long at Malines?" 
 
 " But yesterday. I am passing through the Low Countries 
 on a tour; perhaps you smile at the tour of a blind man, but 
 it is wearisome even to the blind to rest always in the same 
 place. I thought during church-time, when the streets were 
 empty, that I might, by the help of my dog, enjoy safely at 
 least the air, if not the sight of the town ; but there are some 
 persons, methinks, who cannot have even a dog for a friend! " 
 
 The blind man spoke bitterly, — the desertion of his dog 
 
30 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 had touclied him to the core. Lucille wiped her eyes. " And 
 does Monsieur travel then alone?" said she; and looking at 
 his face more attentively than she had yet ventured to do, 
 she saw that he was scarcely above two-and-twenty. "His 
 father, and his 'mother,''^ she added, with an emphasis on the 
 last word, "are they not with him?" 
 
 " I am an orphan ! " answered the stranger ; " and I have 
 neither brother nor sister." 
 
 The desolate condition of the blind man quite melted Lu- 
 cille; never had she been so strongly affected. She felt a 
 strange flutter at the heart, a secret and earnest sympathy, 
 that attracted her at once towards him. She wished that 
 Heaven had suffered her to be his sister! 
 
 The contrast between the youth and the form of the stranger, 
 and the affliction which took hope from the one and activity 
 from the other, increased the compassion he excited. His 
 features were remarkably regular, and had a certain noble- 
 ness in their outline; and his frame was gracefully and 
 firmly knit, though he moved cautiously and with no cheerful 
 step. 
 
 They had now passed into a narrow street leading towards 
 the hotel, when they heard behind them the clatter of hoofs; 
 and Lucille, looking hastily back, saw that a troop of the 
 Belgian horse was passing through the town. 
 
 She drew her charge close by the wall, and trembling with 
 fear for him, she stationed herself by his side. The troop 
 passed at a full trot through the street ; and at the sound of 
 their clanging arms, and the ringing hoofs of their heavy 
 chargers, Lucille might have seen, had she looked at the 
 blind man's face, that its sad features kindled with enthu- 
 siasm, and his head was raised proudly from its wonted and 
 melancholy bend. " Thank Heaven ! " she said, as the troop 
 had nearly passed them, " the danger is over ! " Not so. 
 One of the last two soldiers who rode abreast was unfortu- 
 nately mounted on a young and unmanageable horse. The 
 rider's oaths and digging spur only increased the fire and 
 impatience of the charger; it plunged from side to side of the 
 narrow street. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 31 
 
 " Look to yourselves ! " cried the horseman, as he was borne 
 on to the place where Lucille and the stranger stood against 
 the wall. "Are ye mad? Why do you not run?" 
 
 "For Heaven's sake, for mercy's sake, he is blind! " cried 
 Lucille, clinging to the stranger's side. 
 
 "Save yourself, my kind guide!" said the stranger. But 
 Lucille dreamed not of such desertion. The trooper wrested 
 the horse's head from the spot where they stood; with a 
 snort, as it felt the spur, the enraged animal lashed out 
 with its hind-legs; and Lucille, unable to save both, threw 
 herself before the blind man, and received the shock directed 
 against him; her slight and delicate arm fell broken by her 
 side, the horseman was borne onward. " Thank God, you are 
 saved!" was poor Lucille's exclamation; and she fell, over- 
 come with pain and terror, into the arms which the stranger 
 mechanically opened to receive her. 
 
 "My guide! my friend! " cried he, "you are hurt, you — " 
 
 "No, sir," interrupted Lucille, faintly, "I am better, I am 
 well. This arm, if you please, — we are not far from your 
 hotel now." 
 
 But the stranger's ear, tutored to every inflection of voice, 
 told him at once of the pain she suffered. He drew from her 
 by degrees the confession of the injury she had sustained; but 
 the generous girl did not tell him it had been incurred solely 
 in his protection. He now insisted on reversing their duties, 
 and accompanying her to her home; and Lucille, almost faint- 
 ing with pain, and hardly able to move, was forced to con- 
 sent. But a few steps down the next turning stood the 
 humble mansion of her father. They reached it; and Lucille 
 scarcely crossed the threshold, before she sank down, and for 
 some minutes was insensible to pain. It was left to the 
 stranger to explain, and to beseech them immediately to send 
 for a surgeon, "the most skilful, the most practised in the 
 town," said he. "See, I am rich, and this is the least I can 
 do to atone to your generous daughter, for not forsaking even 
 a stranger in peril." 
 
 He held out his purse as he spoke, but the father refused 
 the offer; and it saved the blind man some shame, that he 
 
32 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 could not see the blush of honest resentment with which so 
 poor a species of renumeration was put aside. 
 
 The young man stayed till the surgeon arrived, till the arm 
 was set; nor did he depart until he had obtained a promise 
 from the mother that he should learn the next morning how 
 the sufferer had passed the night. 
 
 The next morning, indeed, he had intended to quit a town 
 that offers but little temptation to the traveller; but he tar- 
 ried day after day, until Lucille herself accompanied her 
 mother, to assure him of her recovery. 
 
 You know, at least I do, dearest Gertrude, that there is 
 such a thing as love at the first meeting, — a secret, an unac- 
 countable affinity between persons (strangers before) which 
 draws them irresistibly together, — as if there were truth in 
 Plato's beautiful fantasy, that our souls were a portion of the 
 stars, and that spirits, thus attracted to each other, have drawn 
 their original light from the same orb, and yearn for a re- 
 newal of their former union. Yet without recurring to such 
 fanciful solutions of a daily mystery, it was but natural that 
 one in the forlorn and desolate condition of Eugene St. 
 Amand should have felt a certain tenderness for a person 
 who had so generously suffered for his sake. 
 
 The darkness to which he was condemned did not shut 
 from his mind's eye the haunting images of Ideal beauty; 
 rather, on the contrary, in his perpetual and unoccupied soli- 
 tude, he fed the reveries of an imagination naturally warm, 
 and a heart eager for sympathy and commune. 
 
 He had said rightly that his only test of beauty was in the 
 melody of voice ; and never had a softer or more thrilling tone 
 than that of the young maiden touched upon his ear. Her 
 exclamation, so beautifully denying self, so devoted in its 
 charity, " Thank God, 7/oti are saved ! " uttered too in the mo- 
 ment of her own suffering, rang constantly upon his soul, and 
 he yielded, without precisely defining their nature, to vague 
 and delicious sentiments, that his youth had never awakened 
 to till then. And Lucille — the very accident that had hap- 
 pened to her on his behalf only deepened the interest she had 
 already conceived for one who, in the first flush of youth, was 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIILNTE. 33 
 
 thus cut off from the glad objects of life, and left to a night 
 of years desolate and alone. There is, to your beautiful and 
 kindly sex, a natural inclination to protect. This makes them 
 the angels of sickness, the comforters of age, the fosterers of 
 childhood; and this feeling, in Lucille peculiarly developed, 
 had already inexpressibly linked her compassionate nature to 
 the lot of the unfortunate traveller. With ardent affections, 
 and with thoughts beyond her station and her years, she was 
 not without that modest vanity which made her painfully 
 susceptible to her own deficiencies in beauty. Instinctively 
 conscious of how deeply she herself could love, she believed it 
 impossible that she could ever be so loved in return. The 
 stranger, so superior in her eyes to all she had yet seen, was 
 the first who had ever addressed her in that voice which by 
 tones, not words, speaks that admiration most dear to a 
 woman's heart. To him she was beautiful, and her lovely 
 mind spoke out, undimmed by the imperfections of her face. 
 Not, indeed, that Lucille was wholly without personal attrac- 
 tion; her light step and graceful form were elastic with the 
 freshness of youth, and her mouth and smile had so gentle 
 and tender an expression, that there were moments when it. 
 would not have been the blind only who would have mistaken 
 her to be beautiful. Her early childhood had indeed given 
 the promise of attractions, which the smallpox, that then fear- 
 ful malady, had inexorably marred. It had not only seared 
 the smooth skin and brilliant hues, but utterly changed even 
 the character of the features. It so happened that Lucille's. 
 family were celebrated for beauty, and vain of that celebrity;, 
 and so bitterly had her parents deplored the effects of the 
 cruel malady, that poor Lucille had been early taught to con- 
 sider them far more grievous than they really were, and to 
 exaggerate the advantages of that beauty, the loss of which 
 was considered by her parents so heavy a misfortune. Lu- 
 cille, too, had a cousin named Julie, who was the wonder of 
 all Malines for her personal perfections; and as the cousins 
 were much together, the contrast was too striking not to occa- 
 sion frequent mortification to Lucille. But every misfortune 
 has something of a counterpoise; and the consciousness of 
 
 3 
 
34 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 personal inferiority had meekened, without souring, her tem- 
 per, had given gentleness to a spirit that otherwise might 
 have been too high, and humility to a mind that was natu- 
 rally strong, impassioned, and energetic. 
 
 And yet Lucille had long conquered the one disadvantage 
 she most dreaded in the want of beauty. Lucille was never 
 known but to be loved. Wherever came her presence, her 
 bright and soft mind diffused a certain inexpressible charm ; 
 and where she was not, a something was absent from the 
 scene which not even Julie's beauty could replace. 
 
 "I propose," said St. Amand to Madame le Tisseur, Lu- 
 cille's mother, as he sat in her little salon, — for he had al- 
 ready contracted that acquaintance with the family which 
 permitted him to be led to their house, to return the visits 
 Madame le Tisseur had made him, and his dog, once more re- 
 turned a penitent to his master, always conducted his steps to 
 the humble abode, and stopped instinctively at the door, — "I 
 propose," said St. Amand, after a pause, and with some em- 
 barrassment, "to stay a little while longer at Malines; the air 
 agrees with me, and I like the quiet of the place; but you are 
 aware, madam, that at a hotel among strangers, I feel ray 
 situation somewhat cheerless. I have been thinking " — St. 
 Amand paused again — "I have been thinking that if I could 
 persuade some agreeable family to receive me as a lodger, I 
 would fix myself here for some weeks. I am easily pleased." 
 
 "Doubtless there are many in Malines who would be too 
 happy to receive such a lodger." 
 
 "Will you receive me?" asked St. Amand, abruptly. "It 
 was of your family I thought." 
 
 "Of us? Monsieur is too flattering. But we have scarcely 
 a room good enough for you." 
 
 "What difference between one room and another can there 
 be to me? That is the best apartment to my choice in which 
 the human voice sounds most kindly." 
 
 The arrangement was made, and St. Amand came now to 
 reside beneath the same roof as Lucille. And was she not 
 happy that he wanted so constant an attendance; was she not 
 happy that she was ever of use? St. Amand was passion- 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 35 
 
 ately fond of music; he played himself with a skill that was 
 only surpassed by the exquisite melody of his voice; and was 
 not Lucille happy when she sat mute and listening to such 
 sounds as in Malines were never heard before? Was she not 
 happy in gazing on a face to whose melancholy aspect her 
 voice instantly summoned the smile? Was she not happy 
 when the music ceased, and St. Amand called " Lucille " ? 
 Did not her own name uttered by that voice seem to her even 
 sweeter than the music? Was she not happy when they 
 walked out in the still evenings of summer, and her arm 
 thrilled beneath the light touch of one to whom she was so 
 necessary? Was she not proud in her happiness, and was 
 there not something like worship in the gratitude she felt to 
 him for raising her humble spirit to the luxury of feeling 
 herself beloved? 
 
 St. Amand's parents were French. They had resided in 
 the neighbourhood of Amiens, where they had inherited a 
 competent property, to which he had succeeded about two 
 years previous to the date of my story. 
 
 He had been blind from the age of three years. " I know 
 not," said he, as he related these particulars to Lucille one 
 evening when they were alone, — "I know not what the earth 
 may be like, or the heaven, or the rivers whose voice at least 
 I can hear, for I have no recollection beyond that of a con- 
 fused but delicious blending of a thousand glorious colours, — 
 a bright and quick sense of joy, a visible music. But it is 
 only since my childhood closed that I have mourned, as I now 
 unceasingly mourn, for the light of day. My boyhood passed 
 in a quiet cheerfulness; the least trifle then could please and 
 occupy the vacancies of my mind; but it was as I took delight 
 in being read to, as I listened to the vivid descriptions of 
 Poetry, as I glowed at the recital of great deeds, as I was 
 made acquainted by books with the energy, the action, the 
 heat, the fervour, the pomp, the enthusiasm of life, that I 
 gradually opened to the sense of all I was forever denied. I 
 felt that I existed, not lived; and that, in the midst of the Uni- 
 versal Liberty, I was sentenced to a prison, from whose blank 
 walls there was no escape. Still, however, while my parents 
 
36 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 lived, I had something of consoLation; at least I was not 
 alone. They died, and a sudden and dread solitude, a vast 
 and empty dreariness, settled upon my dungeon. One old 
 servant only, who had attended me from my childhood, who 
 had known me in my short privilege of light, by whose recol- 
 lections my mind could grope back its way through the dark 
 and narrow passages of memory to faint glimpses of the sun, 
 was all that remained to me of human sympathies. It did 
 not suflB.ce, however, to coatent me with a home where my 
 father and my mother's kind voice were not. A restless im- 
 patience, an anxiety to move, possessed me, and I set out 
 from my home, journeying whither I cared not, so that at 
 least I could change an air that weighed upon me like a pal- 
 pable burden. I took only this old attendant as my com- 
 panion; he too died three months since at Bruxelles, worn 
 out with years. Alas ! I had forgotten that he was old, for 
 I saw not his progress to decay, and now, save my faith- 
 less dog, I was utterly alone, till I came hither and found 
 theey 
 
 Lucille stooped down to caress the dog; she blessed the 
 desertion that had led him to a friend who never could 
 desert. 
 
 But however much, and however gratefully, St. Amand 
 loved Lucille, her power availed not to chase the melancholy 
 from his brow, and to reconcile him to his forlorn condition. 
 
 " Ah, would that I could see thee ! would that I could look 
 upon a face that my heart vainly endeavours to delineate! " 
 
 "If thou couldst," sighed Lucille, "thou wouldst cease to 
 love me." 
 
 "Impossible!" cried St. Amand, passionately. "However 
 the world may find thee, thou wouldst become my standard of 
 beauty; and I should judge not of thee by others, but of 
 others by thee." 
 
 He loved to hear Lucille read to him, and mostly he loved 
 the descriptions of war, of travel, of wild adventure, and yet 
 they occasioned him the most pain. Often she paused from 
 the page as she heard him sigh, and felt that she would even 
 have renounced the bliss of being loved by him, if she could 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 37 
 
 have restored to him that blessing, the desire for which 
 haunted him as a spectre. 
 
 Lucille's family were Catholic, and, like most in their sta- 
 tion, they possessed the superstitions, as well as the devotion 
 of the faith. Sometimes they amused themselves of an even- 
 ing by the various legends and imaginary miracles of their 
 calendar; and once, as they were thus conversing with two or 
 three of their neighbours, " The Tomb of the Three Kings of 
 Cologne " became the main topic of their wondering recitals. 
 However strong was the sense of Lucille, she was, as you will 
 readily conceive, naturally influenced by the belief of those 
 with whom she had been brought up from her cradle, and she 
 listened to tale after tale of the miracles wrought at the con- 
 secrated tomb, as earnestly and undoubtingly as the rest. 
 
 And the Kings of the East were no ordinary saints ; to the 
 relics of the Three Magi, who followed the Star of Bethlehem, 
 and were the first potentates of the earth who adored its 
 Saviour, well might the pious Catholic suppose that a pecu- 
 liar power and a healing sanctity would belong. Each of the 
 circle (St. Amand, who had been more than usually silent, 
 and even gloomy during the day, had retired to his own apart- 
 ment, for there were some moments when, in the sadness of 
 his thoughts, he sought that solitude which he so impatiently 
 fled from at others) — each of the circle had some story to re- 
 late equally veracious and indisputable, of an infirmity cured, 
 or a prayer accorded, or a sin atoned for at the foot of the 
 holy tomb. One story peculiarly affected Lucille ; the narra- 
 tor, a venerable old man with gray locks, solemnly declared 
 himself a witness of its truth. 
 
 A woman at Anvers had given birth to a son, the offspring 
 of an illicit connection, who came into the world deaf and 
 dumb. The unfortunate mother believed the calamity a pun- 
 ishment for her own sin. "Ah, would," said she, "that the 
 affliction had fallen only upon me! Wretch that I am, my 
 innocent child is punished for my offence!" This idea 
 haunted her night and day; she pined and could not be com- 
 forted. As the child grew up, and wound himself more and 
 more round her heart, his caresses added new pangs to her 
 
38 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 remorse ; and at length (continued the narrator) hearing per- 
 petually of the holy fame of the Tomb of Cologne, she re- 
 solved upon a pilgrimage barefoot to the shrine. "God is 
 merciful," said she; "and He who called Magdalene his sister 
 may take the mother's curse from the child." She then went 
 to Cologne; she poured her tears, her penitence, and her 
 prayers at the sacred tomb. When she returned to her native 
 town, what was her dismay as she approached her cottage to 
 behold it a heap of ruins! Its blackened rafters and yawning 
 casements betokened the ravages of fire. The poor woman 
 sank upon the ground utterly overpowered. Had her son per- 
 ished? At that moment she heard the cry of a child's voice, 
 and, lo! her child rushed to her arms, and called her 
 " mother ! " 
 
 He had been saved from the fire, which had broken out 
 seven days before; but in the terror he had suffered, the 
 string that tied his tongue had been loosened ; he had uttered 
 articulate sounds of distress ; the curse was removed, and one 
 word at least the kind neighbours had already taught him to 
 welcome his mother's return. What cared she now that her 
 substance was gone, that her roof was ashes? She bowed in 
 grateful submission to so mild a stroke; 'her prayer had been 
 heard, and the sin of the mother was visited no longer on the 
 child. 
 
 I have said, dear Gertrude, that this story made a deep im- 
 pression upon Lucille. A misfortune so nearly akin to that 
 of St. Amand removed by the prayer of another filled her 
 with devoted thoughts and a beautiful hope. "Is not the 
 tomb still standing?" thought she. "Is not God still in 
 heaven? — He who heard the guilty, may He not hear the 
 guiltless? Is He not the God of love? Are not the affections 
 the offerings that please Him best? And what though the 
 child's mediator was his mother, can even a mother love her 
 child more tenderly than I love Eugene? But if, Lucille, thy 
 prayer be granted, if he recover his sight, tliy charm is gone, 
 he will love thee no longer. No matter! be it so, — I shall at 
 least have made him happy ! " 
 
 Such were the thoughts that filled the mind of Lucille; she 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 39 
 
 cherished them till they settled into resolution, and she se- 
 cretly vowed to perform her pilgrimage of love. She told 
 neither St. Amand nor her parents of her intention; she knew 
 the obstacles such an announcement would create. Fortu- 
 nately she had an aunt settled at Bruxelles, to whom she had 
 been accustomed once in every year to pay a month's visit, 
 and at that time she generally took with her the work of a 
 twelvemonths' industry, which found a readier sale at Brux- 
 elles than at Malines. Lucille and St. Amand were already 
 betrothed ; their wedding was shortly to take place ; and the 
 custom of the country leading parents, however poor, to nour- 
 ish the honourable ambition of giving some dowry with their 
 daughters, Lucille found it easy to hide the object of her 
 departure, under the pretence of taking the lace to Bruxelles, 
 which had been the year's labour of her mother and herself, — 
 it would sell for sufficient, at least, to defray the preparations 
 for the wedding. 
 
 "Thou art ever right, child," said Madame le Tisseur; "the 
 richer St. Amand is, why, the less oughtest thou to go a beg- 
 gar to his house." 
 
 In fact, the honest ambition of the good people was ex- 
 cited; their pride had been hurt by the envy of the town and 
 the current congratulations on so advantageous a marriage; 
 and they employed themselves in counting up the fortune 
 they should be able to give to their only child, and flattering 
 their pardonable vanity with the notion that there would be 
 no such great disproportion in the connection after all. They 
 were right, but not in their own view of the estimate; the 
 wealth that Lucille brought was what fate could not lessen, 
 reverse could not reach; the ungracious seasons could not 
 blight its sweet harvest; imprudence could not dissipate, 
 fraud could not steal, one grain from its abundant coffers! 
 Like the purse in the Fairy Tale, its use was hourly, its 
 treasure inexhaustible. 
 
 St. Amand alone was not to be won to her departure; he 
 chafed at the notion of a dowry; he was not appeased even 
 by Lucille's representation that it was only to gratify and 
 not to impoverish her parents. "And tho^^, too, canst leave 
 
40 THE PILGRBIS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 me ! " he said, in that plaintive voice which had made his 
 first charm to Lucille's heart. "It is a double blindness! " 
 
 "But for a few days; a fortnight at most, dearest Eugene." 
 
 "A fortnight! you do not reckon time as the blind do," 
 said St. Amand, bitterly. 
 
 "But listen, listen, dear Eugene," said Lucille, weeping. 
 
 The sound of her sobs restored him to a sense of his ingrati- 
 tude. Alas, he knew not how much he had to be grateful 
 for! He held out his arms to her. "Forgive me," said he. 
 " Those who can see Nature know not how terrible it is to be 
 alone." 
 
 "But my mother will not leave you." 
 
 " She is not you ! " 
 
 "And Julie," said Lucille,* hesitatingly. 
 
 "What is Julie to me?" 
 
 "Ah, you are the only one, save my parents, who could 
 think of me in her presence." 
 
 "And why, Lucille? " 
 
 " Why! She is more beautiful than a dream." 
 
 " Say not so. Would I could see, that I might prove to the 
 world how much more beautiful thou art! There is no music 
 in her voice." 
 
 The evening before Lucille departed she sat up late with 
 St. Amand and her mother. They conversed on the future; 
 they made plans ; in the wide sterility of the world they laid 
 out the garden of household love, and filled it with flowers, 
 forgetful of the wind that scatters and the frost that kills. 
 And when, leaning on Lucille's arm, St. Amand sought his 
 chamber, and they parted at his door, which closed upon her, 
 she fell down on her knees at the threshold, and poured out 
 the fulness of her heart in a prayer for his safety and the ful- 
 filment of her timid hope. 
 
 At daybreak she was consigned to the conveyance that per- 
 formed the short journey from Malines to Bruxelles. When 
 she entered the town, instead of seeking her aunt, she rested 
 at an auberge in the suburbs, and confiding her little basket 
 of lace to the care of its hostess, she set out alone, and on 
 foot, upon the errand of her heart's lovely superstition. And 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 41 
 
 erring though it was, her faith redeemed its weakness, her 
 affection made it even sacred; and well may we believe that 
 the Eye which reads all secrets scarce looked reprovingly on 
 that fanaticism Avhose only infirmity was love. 
 
 So fearful was she lest, by rendering the task too easy, she 
 might impair the effect, that she scarcely allowed herself rest 
 or food. Sometimes, in the heat of noon, she wandered a 
 little from the roadside, and under the spreading lime-trees 
 surrendered her mind to its sweet and bitter thoughts; but 
 ever the restlessness of her enterprise urged her on, and faint, 
 weary, and with bleeding feet, she started up and continued 
 her way. At length she reached the ancient city, where a 
 holier age has scarce worn from the habits and aspects of 
 men the Eoman trace. She prostrated herself at the tomb of 
 the Magi ; she proffered her ardent but humble prayer to Him 
 before whose Son those fleshless heads (yet to faith at least 
 preserved) had, eighteen centuries ago, bowed in adoration. 
 Twice every day, for a whole week, she sought the same 
 spot, and poured forth the same prayer. The last day an old 
 priest, who, hovering in the church, had observed her con- 
 stantly at devotion, with that fatherly interest which the 
 better ministers of the Catholic sect (that sect which has cov- 
 ered the earth with the mansions of charity) feel for the un- 
 happy, approached her as she was retiring with moist and 
 downcast eyes, and saluting her, assumed the privilege of his 
 order to inquire if there was aught in which his advice or aid 
 could serve. There was something in the venerable air of the 
 old man which encouraged Lucille; she opened her heart to 
 him; she told him all. The good priest was much moved by 
 her simplicity and earnestness. He questioned her minutely 
 as to the peculiar species of blindness with which St. Amand 
 was afflicted; and after musing a little while, he said, 
 " Daughter, God is great and merciful ; we must trust in His 
 power, but we must not forget that He mostly works by mor- 
 tal agents. As you pass through Louvain in your way home, 
 fail not to see there a certain physician, named Le Kain. He 
 is celebrated through Flanders for the cures he has wrought 
 among the blind, and his advice is sought by all classes from 
 
42 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 far and near. He lives hard by the Hotel de Ville, but any 
 one will inform you of his residence. Stay, my child, you 
 shall take him a note from me ; he is a benevolent and kindly 
 man, and you shall tell him exactly the same story (and with 
 the same voice) you have told to me." 
 
 So saying the priest made Lucille accompany him to his 
 home, and forciiig her to refresh herself less sparingly than 
 she had yet done since she had left Malines, he gave her his 
 blessing, and a letter to Le Kain, which he rightly judged 
 would insure her a patient hearing from the physician. Well 
 known among all men of science was the name of the priest, 
 and a word of recommendation from him went further, where 
 virtue and wisdom were honoured, than the longest letter 
 from the haughtiest sieur in Flanders. 
 
 With a patient and hopeful spirit, the young pilgrim 
 turned her back on the Eoman Cologne; and now about to 
 rejoin St. Amand, she felt neither the heat of the sun nor the 
 weariness of the road. It was one day at noon that she again 
 passed through Louvain, and she soon found herself by the 
 noble edifice of the Hotel de Ville. Proud rose its spires 
 against the sky, and the sun shone bright on its rich tracery 
 and Gothic casements; the broad open street was crowded 
 with persons of all classes, and it was with some modest 
 alarm that Lucille lowered her veil and mingled with the 
 throng. It was easy, as the priest had said, to find the house 
 of Le Kain; she bade the servant take the priest's letter to 
 his master, and she was not long kept Waiting before she was 
 admitted to the physician's presence. He was a spare, tall 
 man, with a bald front, and a calm and friendly countenance. 
 He was not less touched than the priest had been by the man- 
 ner in which she narrated her story, described the affliction 
 of her betrothed, and the hope that had inspired the pilgrim- 
 age she had just made. 
 
 "Well," said he, encouragingly, "we must see our patient. 
 You can bring him hither to me." 
 
 " Ah, sir, I had hoped — " Lucille stopped suddenly. 
 
 "What, my young friend? " 
 
 "That I might have had the triumph of bringing you to 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 43 
 
 Malines. I know, sir, what you are about to say, and I know, 
 sir, your time must be very valuable; but I am not so poor 
 as I seem, and Eugene, that is, M. St. Amand, is very rich, 
 and — and I have at Bruxelles what I am sure is a large 
 sum; it was to have provided for the wedding, but it is most 
 heartily at your service, sir." 
 
 Le Kain smiled ; he was one of those men who love to read 
 the human heart when its leaves are fair and uudefiled; and, 
 in the benevolence of science, he would have gone a longer 
 journey than from Louvain to Malines to give sight to the 
 blind, even had St. Amand been a beggar. 
 
 "Well, well," said he, "but you forget that M. St. Amand 
 is not the only one in the world who wants me. I must look 
 at my notebook, and see if I can be spared for a day or 
 two." 
 
 So saying, he glanced at his memoranda. Everything 
 smiled on Lucille; he had no engagements that his partner 
 could not fulfil, for some days; he consented to accompany 
 Lucille to Malines. 
 
 Meamvhile, cheerless and dull had passed the time to St. 
 Amand. He was perpetually asking Madame le Tisseur what 
 hour it was, — it was almost his only question. There seemed 
 to him no sun in the heavens, no freshness in the air, and he 
 even forbore his favourite music; the instrument had lost its 
 sweetness since Lucille was not by to listen. 
 
 It was natural that the gossips of Malines should feel some 
 envy at the marriage Lucille was about to make with one 
 whose competence report had exaggerated into prodigal wealth, 
 whose birth had been elevated from the respectable to the 
 noble, and whose handsome person was clothed, by the in- 
 terest excited by his misfortune, with the beauty of Antinous. 
 Even that misfortune, which ought to have levelled all dis- 
 tinctions, was not sufficient to check the general envj^; per- 
 haps to some of the damsels of Malines blindness in a husband 
 would not have seemed an unwelcome infirmity! But there 
 was one in whom this envy rankled with a peculiar sting : it 
 was the beautiful, the all-conquering Julie ! That the humble, 
 the neglected Lucille should be preferred to her; that Lucille, 
 
44 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 whose existence was well-nigh forgot beside Julie's, should 
 become thus suddenly of importance ; that there should be one 
 person in the world, and that person young, rich, handsome, 
 to whom she was less than nothing, when weighed in the 
 balance with Lucille, mortified to the quick a vanity that had 
 never till then received a wound. "It is well," she would 
 say with a bitter jest, "that Lucille's lover is blind. To be 
 the one it is necessary to be the other ! " 
 
 During Lucille's absence she had been constantly in Madame 
 le Tisseur's house; indeed, Lucille had prayed her to be so. 
 She had sought, with an industry that astonished herself, to 
 supply Lucille's place; and among the strange contradictions 
 of human nature, she had learned during her efforts to please, 
 to love the object of those efforts, — as much at least as she 
 was capable of loving. 
 
 She conceived a positive hatred to Lucille ; she persisted in 
 imagining that nothing but the accident of first acquaintance 
 had deprived her of a conquest with which she persuaded her- 
 self her happiness had become connected. Had St. Am and 
 never loved Lucille and proposed to Julie, his misfortune 
 would have made her reject him, despite his wealth and his 
 youth; but to be Lucille's lover, and a conquest to be won 
 from Lucille, raised him instantly to an importance not his 
 own. Safe, however, in his af&iction, the arts and beauty of 
 Julie fell harmless on the fidelity of St. Amand. Nay, he 
 liked her less than ever, for it seemed an impertinence in any 
 one to counterfeit the anxiety and watchfulness of Lucille. 
 
 " It is time, surely it is time, Madame le Tisseur, that Lu- 
 cille should return? She might have sold all the lace in 
 Malines by this time," said St. Amand, one day, peevishly. 
 
 "Patience, my dear friend, patience; perhaps she may 
 return to-morrow." 
 
 "To-morrow! let me see, it is only six o'clock, — only six, 
 you are sure? " 
 
 "Just five, dear Eugene. Shall I read to you? This is a 
 new book from Paris; it has made a great noise," said Julie. 
 
 "You are very kind, but I will not trouble you." 
 
 "It is anything but trouble." 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 45 
 
 "In a word, then, I would rather not." 
 
 "Oh, that he could see!" thought Julie; "would I not 
 punish him for this ! " 
 
 "I hear carriage wheels; who can be passing this way? 
 Surely it is the volturier from Bruxelles," said St. Amand, 
 starting up; "it is his day, — his hour, too. No, no, it is a 
 lighter vehicle," and he sank down listlessly on his seat. 
 
 Nearer and nearer rolled the wheels; they turned the cor- 
 ner; they stopped at the lowly door; and, overcome, over- 
 joyed, Lucille was clasped to the bosom of St. Amand. 
 
 "Stay," said she, blushing, as she recovered her self-pos- 
 session, and turned to Le Kain; "pray pardon me, sir. Dear 
 Eugene, I have brought with me one who, by God's blessing, 
 may yet restore you to sight." 
 
 "We must not be sanguine, my child," said Le Kain; "any- 
 thing is better than disappointment." 
 
 To close this part of my story, dear Gertrude, Le Kain ex- 
 amined St. Amand, and the result of the examination was a 
 confident belief in the probability of a cure. St. Amand 
 gladly consented to the experiment of an operation; it suc- 
 ceeded, the blind man saw! Oh, what were Lucille's feel- 
 ings, what her emotion, what her joy, when she found the 
 object of her pilgrimage, of her prayers, fulfilled! That joy 
 was so intense that in the eternal alternations of human life 
 she might have foretold from its excess how bitter the sorrows 
 fated to ensue. 
 
 As soon as by degrees "the patient's new sense became rec- 
 onciled to the light, his first, his only demand was for Lucille. 
 " No, let me not see her alone ; let me see her in the midst of 
 you all, that I may convince you that the heart never is mis- 
 taken in its instincts." "With a fearful, a sinking presenti- 
 ment, Lucille yielded to the request, to which the impetuous 
 St. Amand would hear indeed no denial. The father, the 
 mother, Julie, Lucille, Julie's younger sisters, assembled in 
 the little parlour; the door opened, and St. Amand stood 
 hesitating on the threshold. One look around sufficed to 
 him; his face brightened, he uttered a cry of joy. "Lucille! 
 
46 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 Lucille!" he exclaimed, "it is you, I know it, you only I" 
 He sprang forward and fell at the feet of Julie I 
 
 Flushed, elated, triumphant, Julie bent upon him her 
 sparkling eyes; she did not undeceive him. 
 
 " You are wrong, you mistake, " said Madame le Tisseur, in 
 confusion; "that is her cousin Julie, — this is your Lucille." 
 
 St. Amand rose, turned, saw Lucille, and at that moment 
 she wished herself in her grave. Surprise, mortification, dis- 
 appointment, almost dismay, were depicted in his gaze. He 
 had been haunting his prison-house with dreams, and now, 
 set free, he felt how unlike the}^ were to the truth. Too new 
 to observation to read the woe, the despair, the lapse and 
 shrinking of the whole frame, that his look occasioned Lu- 
 cille, he yet felt, when the first shock of his surprise was 
 over, that it was not thus he should thank her who had re- 
 stored him to sight. He hastened to redeem his error — ah ! 
 how could it be redeemed? 
 
 From that hour all Lucille's happiness was at an end; her 
 fairy palace was shattered in the dust; the magician's wand 
 was broken up; the Ariel was given to the winds; and the 
 bright enchantment no longer distinguished the land she lived 
 in from the rest of the barren world. It is true that St. 
 Amand's words were kind; it is true that he remembered 
 with the deepest gratitude all she had done in his behalf; it 
 is true that he forced himself again and again to say, " She is 
 my betrothed, my benefactress!" and he cursed himself to 
 think that the feelings he had entertained for her were fled. 
 "Where was the passion of his words ; where the ardour of his 
 tone; where that play and light of countenance which her 
 step, her voice, could formerly call forth? When they were 
 alone he was embarrassed and constrained, and almost cold; 
 his hand no longer sought hers, his soul no longer missed her 
 if she was absent a moment from his side. When in their 
 household circle he seemed visibly more at ease; but did liis 
 eyes fasten upon her who had opened them to the day; did 
 they not wander at every interval with a too eloquent admira- 
 tion to the blushing and radiant face of the exulting Julie? 
 This was not, you will believe, suddenly perceptible in one 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 47 
 
 day or one week, but every day it was perceptible more and 
 more. Yet still — bewitched, ensnared, as St. Amand was — 
 he never perhaps would have been guilty of an infidelity that 
 he strove with the keenest remorse to wrestle against, had it 
 not been for the fatal contrast, at the first moment of his 
 gushing enthusiasm, which Julie had presented to Lucille; 
 but for that he would have formed no previous idea of real 
 and living beauty to aid the disappointment of his imaginings 
 and his dreams. He would have seen Lucille young and 
 graceful, and with eyes beaming affection, contrasted only by 
 the wrinkled countenance and bended frame of her parents, 
 and she would have completed her conquest over him before 
 he had discovered that she was less beautiful than others; 
 nay, more, — that infidelity never could have lasted above the 
 first few days, if the vain and heartless object of it had not 
 exerted every art, all the power and witchery of her beauty, 
 to cement and continue it. The unfortunate Lucille — so sus- 
 ceptible to the slightest change in those she loved, so diffident 
 of herself, so proud too in that diffidence — no longer neces- 
 sary, no longer missed, no longer loved, could not bear to 
 endure the galling comparison between the past and the 
 present. She fled uncomplainingly to her chamber to indulge 
 her tears, and thus, unhappily, absent as her father generally 
 was during the day, and busied as her mother was either at 
 work or in household matters, she left Julie a thousand op- 
 portunities to complete the power she had begun to wield over 
 — no, not the heart ! — the senses of St. Amand ! Yet, still 
 not suspecting, in the open generosity of her mind, the whole 
 extent of her affliction, poor Lucille buoyed herself at times 
 with the hope that when once married, when, once in that 
 intimacy of friendship, the unspeakable love she felt for him 
 could disclose itself with less restraint than at present, — she 
 would perhaps regain a heart which had been so devotedly 
 hers, that she could not think that without a fault it was 
 irrevocably gone : on that hope she anchored all the little hap- 
 piness that remained to her. And still St. Amand pressed 
 their marriage, but in what different tones ! In fact, he wished 
 to preclude from himself the possibility of a deeper ingratitude 
 
48 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 than tliat which, he had incurred already. He vainly thought 
 that the broken reed of love might be bound up and strength- 
 ened by the ties of duty; and at least he was anxious that his 
 hand, his fortune, his esteem, his gratitude, should give to 
 Lucille the only recompense it was now in his power to be- 
 stow. Meanwhile, left alone so often with Julie, and Julie 
 bent on achieving the last triumph over his heart, St. Amand 
 was gradually preparing a far different reward, a far different 
 return, for her to whom he owed so incalculable a debt. 
 
 There was a garden, behind the house, in which there was 
 a small arbour, where often in the summer evenings Eugene 
 and Lucille had sat together, — hours never to return! One 
 day she heard from her own chamber, where she sat mourn- 
 ing, the sound of St. Amand's flute swelling gently from that 
 beloved and consecrated bower. She wept as she heard it, 
 and the memories that the music bore softening and endear- 
 ing his image, she began to reproach herself that she had 
 yielded so often to the impulse of her wounded feelings ; that 
 chilled by his coldness, she had left him so often to himself, 
 and had not sufficientl}^ dared to tell him of that affection 
 which, in her modest self-depreciation, constituted her only 
 pretension to his love. "Perhaps he is alone now," she 
 thought ; " the air too is one which he knows that I love : " 
 and with her heart in her step, she stole from the house and 
 sought the arbour. She had scarce turned from her chamber 
 when the flute ceased; as she neared the arbour she heard 
 voices, — Julie's voice in grief, St. Amand's in consolation. 
 A dread foreboding seized her; her feet clung rooted to the 
 earth. 
 
 "Yes, marry her, forget me," said Julie; "in a few days 
 you will be another's, and I — I — forgive me, Eugene, for- 
 give me that I have disturbed your happiness. I am punished 
 sufficiently; my heart will break, but it will break in loving 
 you." Sobs choked Julie's voice. 
 
 "Oh, speak not thus," said St. Amand. "I, / only am to 
 blame, — I, false to both, to both ungrateful. Oh, from the 
 hour that these eyes opened upon you I drank in a new life; 
 the sun itself to me was less wonderful than your beauty. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 49 
 
 But — but — let me forget that hour. What do I not owe to 
 Lucille? I shall be wretched, — I shall deserve to be so; for 
 shall I not think, Julie, that I have embittered your life with 
 our ill-fated love? But all that I can give — my hand, my 
 home, my plighted faith — must be hers. Nay, Julie, nay — 
 why that look? Could I act otherwise? Can I dream other- 
 wise? Whatever the sacrifice, must I not render it? Ah, 
 what do I owe to Lucille, were it only for the thought that 
 but for her I might never have seen thee ! " 
 
 Lucille stayed to hear no more; with the same soft step as 
 that which had borne her within hearing of these fatal words, 
 she turned back once more to her desolate chamber. 
 
 That evening, as St. Amand was sitting alone in his apart- 
 ment, he heard a gentle knock at the door. "Come in," he 
 said, and Lucille entered. He started in some confusion, and 
 would have taken her hand, but she gently repulsed him. 
 She took a seat opposite to him, and looking down, thus ad- 
 dressed him : — 
 
 "My dear Eugene, that is, Monsieur St. Amand, I have 
 something on my mind that 1 think it better to speak at 
 once; and if I do not exactly express what I would wish to 
 say, you must not be offended with Lucille : it is not an easy 
 matter to put into words what one feels deeply." Colouring, 
 and suspecting something of the truth, St. Amand would have 
 broken in upon her here; but she with a gentle impatience 
 motioned him to be silent, and continued: — 
 
 "You know that when you once loved me, I used to tell 
 you that you would cease to do so could you see how unde- 
 serving I was of your attachment. I did not deceive myself, 
 Eugene ; I always felt assured that such would be the case, 
 that your love for me necessarily rested on your affliction. 
 But for all that I never at least had a dream or a desire but 
 for your happiness; and God knows, that if again, by walk- 
 ing barefooted, not to Cologne, but to Eome — to the end of 
 the world — I could save you from a much less misfortune 
 than that of blindness, I would cheerfully do it; yes, even 
 though I might foretell all the while that, on my return, you 
 would speak to me coldly, think of me lightly, and that the 
 
 4 
 
60 THE PILGRLVIS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 penalty to me would — would be — what it has been! " Here 
 Lucille wiped a few natural tears from her eyes. St. Amand, 
 struck to the heart, covered his face with his hands, without 
 the courage to interrupt her. Lucille continued : — 
 
 " That which I foresaw has come to pass ; I am no longer to 
 you what I once was, when you could clothe this poor form 
 and this homely face with a beauty they did not possess. You 
 would wed me still, it is true ; but I am proud, Eugene, and 
 cannot stoop to gratitude where I once had love. I am not so 
 unjust as to blame you; the change was natural, was inevita- 
 ble. I should have steeled myself more against it; but I am 
 now resigned. We must part; you love Julie — that too is 
 natural — and she loves you; ah! what also more in the prob- 
 able course of events? Julie loves you, not yet, perhaps, so 
 much as I did; but then she has not known you as I have, 
 and she whose whole life has been triumph cannot feel the 
 gratitude that I felt at fancying myself loved; but this will 
 come — God grant it! Farewell, then, forever, dear Eugene; 
 I leave you when you no longer want me ; you are now inde- 
 pendent of Lucille ; wherever you go, a thousand hereafter can 
 supply my place. Farewell ! " 
 
 She rose, as she said this, to leave the room ; but St. Amand 
 seizing her hand, which she in vain endeavoured to withdraw 
 from his clasp, poured forth incoherently, passionately, his 
 reproaches on himself, his eloquent persuasion against her 
 resolution. 
 
 "I confess," said he, "that I have been allured for a mo- 
 ment; I confess that Julie's beauty made me less sensible to 
 your stronger, your holier, oh! far, far holier title to my love! 
 But forgive me, dearest Lucille; already I return to you, to 
 all I once felt for you; make me not curse the blessing of 
 sight that I owe to you. You must not leave me ; never can we 
 two part. Try me, only try me, and if ever hereafter my heart 
 wander from you, then, Lucille, leave me to my remorse ! " 
 
 Even at that moment Lucille did not yield; she felt that 
 his prayer was but the enthusiasm of the hour; she felt that 
 there was a virtue in her pride, — that to leave him was a 
 duty to herself. In vain he pleaded; in vain were his em- 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 51 
 
 braces, his prayers; in vain he reminded her of their plighted 
 troth, of her aged parents, whose happiness had beconie 
 wrapped in her union with him: "How, — even were it as 
 you wrongly believe, — how, in honour to them, can I desert 
 you, can I wed another? " 
 
 "Trust that, trust all, to me," answered Lucille; "your 
 honour shall be my care, none shall blame you; only do not 
 let your marriage with Julie be celebrated here before their 
 eyes : that is all I ask, all they can expect. God bless you! 
 do not fancy I shall be unhappy, for whatever happiness the 
 world gives you, shall I not have contributed to bestow it? — 
 and with that thought I ain above compassion." 
 
 She glided from his arms, and left him to a solitude more 
 bitter even than that of blindness. That very night Lucille 
 sought her mother; to her she confided all. I pass over the 
 reasons she urged, the arguments she overcame; she con- 
 quered rather than convinced, and leaving to Madame le 
 Tisseur the painful task of breaking to her father her unal- 
 terable resolution, she quitted Malines the next morning, 
 and with a heart too honest to be utterly without comfort, 
 paid that visit to her aunt which had been so long deferred. 
 
 The pride of Lucille 's parents prevented them from re- 
 proaching St. Amand. He could not bear, however, their 
 cold and altered looks; he left their house; and though for 
 several days he would not even see Julie, yet her beauty and 
 her art gradually resumed their empire over him. They were 
 married at Courtroi, and to the joy of the vain Julie departed 
 to the gay metropolis of France. But, before their departure, 
 before his marriage, St. Amand endeavoured to appease his 
 conscience by obtaining for M. le Tisseur a much more lucra- 
 tive and honourable office than that he now held. Rightly 
 judging that Malines could no longer be a pleasant residence 
 for them, and much less for Lucille, the duties of the post 
 were to be fulfilled in another town; and knowing that M. le 
 Tisseur's delicacy would revolt at receiving such a favour 
 from his hands, he kept the nature of his negotiation a close 
 secret, and suffered the honest citizen to believe that his own 
 merits alone had entitled him to so unexpected a promotion. 
 
62 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 Time went on. This quiet and simple history of humble 
 affections took its date in a stormy epoch of the world, — the 
 dawning Kevolution of France. The family of Lucille had 
 been little more than a year settled in their new residence 
 when Dumouriez led his army into the Netherlands. But 
 how meanwhile had that year passed for Lucille? I have 
 said that her spirit was naturally high; that though so ten- 
 der, she was not weak. Her very pilgrimage to Cologne 
 alone, and at the timid age of seventeen, proved that there 
 was a strength in her nature no less than a devotion in her 
 love. The sacrifice she had made brought its own reward. 
 She believed St. Amand was happy, and she would not give 
 way to the selfishness of grief; she had still duties to per- 
 form; she could still comfort her parents and cheer their age; 
 she could still be all the world to them : she felt this, and was 
 consoled. Only once during the year had she heard of Julie ; 
 she had been seen by a mutual friend at Paris, gay, brilliant, 
 courted, and admired; of St. Amand she heard nothing. 
 
 My tale, dear Gertrude, does not lead me through the harsh 
 scenes of war. I do not tell you of the slaughter and the 
 siege, and the blood that inundated those fair lands, — the 
 great battlefield of Europe. The people of the Netherlands 
 in general were with the cause of Dumouriez, but the town in 
 which Le Tisseur dwelt offered some faint resistance to his 
 arms. Le Tisseur himself, despite his age, girded on his 
 sword; the town was carried, and the fierce and licentious 
 troops of the conqueror poured, flushed with their easy vic- 
 tory, through its streets. Le Tisseur's house was filled with 
 drunken and rude troopers; Lucille herself trembled in the 
 fierce gripe of one of those dissolute soldiers, more bandit 
 than soldier, whom the subtle Dumouriez had united to his 
 army, and by whose blood he so often saved that of his nobler 
 band. Her shrieks, her cries, were vain, when suddenly the 
 troopers gave way. " The Captain ! brave Captain ! " was 
 shouted forth ; the insolent soldier, felled by a powerful arm, 
 sank senseless at the feet of Lucille, and a glorious form, tow- 
 ering above its fellows, — even through its glittering garb, 
 even in that dreadful hour, remembered at a glance by Lu- 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 53 
 
 cille, — stood at her side; her protector, her guardian! Thus 
 once more she beheld St. Arnand! 
 
 The house was cleared in an instant, the door barred. 
 Shouts, groans, wild snatches of exulting song, the clang of 
 arms, the tramp of horses, the hurrying footsteps, the deep 
 music sounded loud, and blended terribly without. Lucille 
 heard them not, — she was on that breast which never should 
 have deserted her. 
 
 Effectually to protect his friends, St. Amand took up his 
 quarters at their house ; and for two days he was once more 
 under the same roof as Lucille. He never recurred volun- 
 tarily to Julie; he answered Lucille's timid inquiry after her 
 health briefly, and with coldness, but he spoke with all the 
 enthusiasm of a long-pent and ardent spirit of the new profes- 
 sion he had embraced. Glory seemed now to be his only mis- 
 tress ; and the vivid delusion of the first bright dreams of the 
 Revolution filled his mind, broke from his tongue, and lighted 
 up those dark eyes which Lucille had redeemed to day. 
 
 She saw him depart at the head of his troops; she saw his 
 proud crest glancing in the sun; she saw his steed winding 
 through the narrow street; she saw that his last glance re- 
 verted to her, where she stood at the door; and, as he waved 
 his adieu, she fancied that there was on his face that look of 
 deep and grateful tenderness which reminded her of the one 
 bright epoch of her life. 
 
 She was right ; St. Amand had long since in bitterness re- 
 pented of a transient infatuation, had long since distinguished 
 the true Florimel from the false, and felt that, in Julie, Lu- 
 cille's wrongs were avenged. But in the hurry and heat of 
 war he plunged that regret — the keenest of all — which em- 
 bodies the bitter words, "too late! " 
 
 Years passed away, and in the resumed tranquillity of Lu- 
 cille's life the brilliant apparition of St. Amand appeared as 
 something dreamed of, not seen. The star of Napoleon had 
 risen above the horizon; the romance of his early career had 
 commenced; and the campaign of Egypt had been the herald 
 of those brilliant and meteoric successes which flashed forth 
 from the gloom of the Revolution of France. 
 
54 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 You are aware, dear Gertrude, how many in the French as 
 well as the English troops returned home from Egypt blinded 
 with the ophthalmia of that arid soil. Some of the young 
 men in Lucille's town, who had joined Napoleon's army, came 
 back darkened by that fearful affliction, and Lucille's alms 
 and Lucille's aid and Lucille's sweet voice were ever at hand 
 for those poor sufferers, whose common misfortune touched so 
 thrilling a chord of her heart. 
 
 Her father was now dead, and she had only her mother to 
 cheer amidst the ills of age. As one evening they sat at work 
 together, Madame le Tisseur said, after a pause, — 
 
 "I wish, dear Lucille, thou couldst be persuaded to marry 
 Justin ; he loves thee well, and now that thou art yet young, 
 and hast many years before thee, thou shouldst remember that 
 when I die thou wilt be alone." 
 
 " Ah, cease, dearest mother, I never can marry now ; and as 
 for love — once taught in the bitter school in which I have 
 learned the knowledge of myself — I cannot be deceived 
 again." 
 
 " My Lucille, you do not know yourself. Never was woman 
 loved if Justin does not love you; and never did lover feel 
 with more real warmth how worthily he loved." 
 
 And this was true; and not of Justin alone, for Lucille's 
 modest virtues, her kindly temper, and a certain undulating 
 and feminine grace, which accompanied all her movements, 
 had secured her as many conquests as if she had been beauti- 
 ful. She had rejected all offers of marriage with a shudder; 
 without even the throb of a flattered vanity. One memory, 
 sadder, was also dearer to her than all things ; and something 
 sacred in its recollections made her deem it even a crime to 
 think of effacing the past by a new affection. 
 
 "I believe," continued Madame le Tisseur, angrily, "that 
 thou still thinkest fondly of him from whom only in the 
 world thou couldst have experienced ingratitude." 
 
 "Nay, Mother," said Lucille, with a blush and a slight 
 sigh, "Eugene is married to another." 
 
 While thus conversing, they heard a gentle and timid knock 
 at the door; the latch was lifted. "This," said the rough 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 55 
 
 voice of a commissionaire of the town, "this, monsieur, is the 
 house of Madame le Tisseur, and voila mademoiselle ! " A tall 
 figure, with a shade over his eyes, and wrapped in a long 
 military cloak, stood in the room. A thrill shot across 
 Lucille's heart. He stretched out his arms. "Lucille," said 
 that melancholy voice, which had made the music of her first 
 youth, "where art thou, Lucille? Alas! she does not recog- 
 nize St. Amand." 
 
 Thus was it indeed. By a singular fatality, the burning 
 suns and the sharp dust of the plains of Egypt had smitten 
 the young soldier, in the flush of his career, with a second — 
 and this time with an irremediable — blindness ! He had re- 
 turned to France to find his hearth lonely. Julie was no 
 more, — a sudden fever had cut her off in the midst of youth; 
 and he had sought his way to Lucille's house, to see if one 
 hope yet remained to him in the world! 
 
 And when, days afterwards, humbly and sadly he re-urged 
 a former suit, did Lucille shut her heart to its prayer? Did 
 her pride remember its wound; did she revert to his deser- 
 tion; did she reply to the whisper of her yearning love, 
 " Thou hast been before forsaken " ? That voice and those 
 darkened eyes pleaded to her with a pathos not to be resisted. 
 "I am once more necessary to him," was all her thought; "if 
 I reject him who will tend him? " In that thought was the 
 motive of her conduct ; in that thought gushed back upon her 
 soul all the springs of checked but unconquered, unconquer- 
 able love ! In that thought, she stood beside him at the altar, 
 and pledged, with a yet holier devotion than she might have 
 felt of yore, the vow of her imperishable truth. 
 
 And Lucille found, in the future, a reward, which the com- 
 mon world could never comprehend. With his blindness re- 
 turned all the feelings she had first awakened in St. Amand's 
 solitary heart ; again he yearned for her step, again he missed 
 even a moment's absence from his side, again her voice chased 
 the shadow from his brow, and in her presence was a sense of 
 shelter and of sunshine. He no longer sighed for the blessing 
 he had lost; he reconciled himself to fate, and entered into 
 that serenity of mood which mostly characterizes the blind. 
 
66 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 Perhaps after we have seen the actual world, and experienced 
 its hollow pleasures, we can resign ourselves the better to its 
 exclusion ; and as the cloister, which repels the ardour of our 
 hope, is sweet to our remembrance, so the darkness loses its 
 terror when experience has wearied us with the glare and 
 travail of the day. It was something, too, as they advanced 
 in life, to feel the chains that bound him to Lucille strength- 
 ening daily, and to cherish in his overflowing heart the sweet- 
 ness of increasing gratitude; it was something that he could 
 not see years wrinkle that open brow, or dim the tenderness 
 of that touching smile; it was something that to him she was 
 beyond the reach of time, and preserved to the verge of a 
 grave (which received them both within a few days of each 
 other) in all the bloom of her unwithering affection, in all the 
 freshness of a heart that never could grow old! 
 
 Gertrude, who had broken in upon Trevylyan's story by a 
 thousand anxious interruptions, and a thousand pretty apolo- 
 gies for interrupting, was charmed with a tale in which true 
 love was made happy at last, although she did not forgive 
 St. Amand his ingratitude, and although she declared, with a 
 critical shake of the head, that *' it was very unnatural that 
 the mere beauty of Julie, or the mere want of it in Lucille, 
 should have produced such an effect upon him, if he had ever 
 really loved Lucille in his blindness." 
 
 As they passed through Malines, the town assumed an in- 
 terest in Gertrude's eyes to which it scarcely of itself was en- 
 titled. She looked wistfully at the broad market-place, at a 
 corner of which was one of those out-of-door groups of quiet 
 and noiseless revellers, which Dutch art has raised from the 
 Familiar to the Picturesque; and then glancing to the tower 
 of St. Rembauld, she fancied, amidst the silence of noon, that 
 she yet heard the plaintive cry of the blind orphan, " Fido, 
 Pido, why hast thou deserted me? " 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 57 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ROTTERDAM. THE CHARACTER OF THE DUTCH. THEIR RE- 
 SEMBLANCE 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 CON- 
 TRAST BETWEEN LITERARY AMBITION AND THE AMBITION 
 OF PUBLIC LIFE. 
 
 Our travellers arrived at Rotterdam on a bright and sunny- 
 day. There is a cheerfulness about the operations of Com- 
 merce, — a life, a bustle, an action which always exhilarate 
 the spirits at the first glance. Afterwards they fatigue us; 
 we get too soon behind the scenes, and find the base and 
 troublous passions which move the puppets and conduct the 
 drama. 
 
 But Gertrude, in whom ill health had not destroyed the 
 vividness of impression that belongs to the inexperienced, 
 was delighted at the cheeriness of all around her. As she 
 leaned lightly on Trevylyan's arm, he listened with a forget- 
 ful joy to her questions and exclamations at the stir and live- 
 liness of a city from which was to commence their pilgrimage 
 along the Rhine. And indeed the scene was rife with the 
 spirit of that people at once so active and so patient, so dar- 
 ing on the sea, so cautious on the land. Industry was visi- 
 ble everywhere ; the vessels in the harbour, the crowded boat 
 putting off to land, the throng on the quay, — all looked bus- 
 tling and spoke of commerce. The city itself, on which the 
 skies shone fairly through light and fleecy clouds, wore a 
 cheerful aspect. The church of St. Lawrence rising above 
 the clean, neat houses, and on one side trees thickly grouped, 
 gayly contrasted at once the waters and the city. 
 
 "I like this place," said Gertrude's father, quietly; "it has 
 an air of comfort." 
 
58 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 "And an absence of grandeur," said Trevylyan. 
 
 " A commercial people are one great middle-class in their 
 habits and train of mind, " replied Vane ; " and grandeur be- 
 longs to the extremes, — an impoverished population and a 
 wealthy despot." 
 
 They went to see the statue of Erasmus, and the house in 
 which he was born. Vane had a certain admiration for Eras- 
 mus which his companions did not share ; he liked the quiet 
 irony of the sage, and his knowledge of the world; and, be- 
 sides. Vane was at that time of life when philosophers become 
 objects of interest. At first they are teachers; secondly, 
 friends ; and it is only a few who arrive at the third stage, 
 and find them deceivers. The Dutch are a singular people. 
 Their literature is neglected, but it has some of the German 
 vein in its strata, — the patience, the learning, the homely 
 delineation, and even some traces of the mixture of the hu- 
 morous and the terrible which form that genius for the gro- 
 tesque so especially German — you find this in their legends 
 and ghost-stories. But in Holland activity destroys, in Ger- 
 many indolence nourishes, romance. 
 
 They stayed a day or two at Eotterdam, and then proceeded 
 up the Rhine to Gorcum. The banks were flat and tame, and 
 nothing could be less impressive of its native majesty than 
 this part of the course of the great river. 
 
 "I never felt before," whispered Gertrude, tenderly, "how 
 much there was of consolation in your presence; for here I 
 am at last on the Ehine, — the blue Rhine, and how disap- 
 pointed I should be if you were not by my side ! " 
 
 "But, my Gertrude, you must wait till we have passed 
 Cologne, before the glories of the Rhine burst upon you." 
 
 "It reverses life, my child," said the moralizing Vane; 
 " and the stream flows through dulness at first, reserving its 
 poetry for our perseverance." 
 
 "I will not allow your doctrine," said Trevylyan, as the 
 ambitious ardour of his native disposition stirred within him. 
 "Life has always action; it is our own fault if it ever be dull: 
 youth has its enterprise, manhood its schemes; and even if 
 infirmity creep upon age, the mind, the mind still triumphs 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 59 
 
 over the mortal clay, and in the quiet hermitage, among books, 
 and from thoughts, keeps the great wheel within everlastingly 
 in motion. No, the better class of spirits have always an an- 
 tidote to the insipidity of a common career, they have ever 
 energy at will — " 
 
 "And never happiness!" answered Vane, after a pause, as 
 he gazed on the proud countenance of Trevylyan, with that 
 kind of calm, half-pitying interest which belonged to a charac- 
 ter deeply imbued with the philosophy of a sad experience act- 
 ing upon an uuimpassioned heart. " And in truth, Trevylyan, 
 it would please me if I could but teach you the folly of prefer- 
 ring the exercise of that energy of which you speak to the 
 golden luxuries of rest. What ambition can ever bring an 
 adequate reward? Not, surely, the ambition of letters, the 
 desire of intellectual renown!" 
 
 "True," said Trevylyan, quietly; "that dream I have long 
 renounced; there is nothing palpable in literary fame, — it 
 scarcely perhaps soothes the vain, it assuredly chafes the 
 proud. In my earlier years I attempted some works which 
 gained what the world, perhaps rightly, deemed a sufficient 
 need of reputation; yet it was not sufficient to recompense 
 myself for the fresh hours I had consumed, for the sacrifices 
 of pleasure I had made. The subtle aims that had inspired 
 me were not perceived ; the thoughts that had seemed new and 
 beautiful to me fell flat and lustreless on the soul of others. 
 If I was approved, it was often for what I condemned myself; 
 and I found that the trite commonplace and the false wit 
 charmed, while the truth fatigued, and the enthusiasm re- 
 volted. For men of that genius to which I make no preten- 
 sion, who have dwelt apart in the obscurity of their own 
 thoughts, gazing upon stars that shine not for the dull 
 sleepers of the world, it must be a keen sting to find the pro- 
 duct of their labour confounded with a class, and to be min- 
 gled up in men's judgment with the faults or merits of a 
 tribe. Every great genius must deem himself original and 
 alone in his conceptions. It is not enough for him that these 
 conceptions should be approved as good, unless they are ad- 
 mitted as inventive, if they mix him with the herd he has 
 
60 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 shunned, not separate him in fame as he has been separated 
 in soul. Some Frenchman, the oracle of his circle, said of 
 the poet of the 'PhSdre, ' 'Racine and the other imitators of 
 Corneille ; ' and Racine, in his wrath, nearly forswore tragedy 
 forever. It is in vain to tell the author that the public is the 
 judge of his works. The author believes himself above the 
 public, or he would never have written; and," continued 
 Trevylyan, with enthusiasm, "he is above them; their fiat 
 may crush his glory, but never his self-esteem. He stands 
 alone and haughty amidst the wrecks of the temple he imag- 
 ined he had raised * to the future, ' and retaliates neglect 
 with scorn. But is this, the life of scorn, a pleasurable state 
 of existence? Is it one to be cherished? Does even the 
 moment of fame counterbalance the years of mortification? 
 And what is there in literary fame itself present and palpable 
 to its heir? His work is a pebble thrown into the deep; the 
 stir lasts for a moment, and the wave closes up, to be suscep- 
 tible no more to the same impression. The circle may widen 
 to other lands and other ages, but around him it is weak and 
 faint. The trifles of the day, the low politics, the base in- 
 trigues, occupy the tongue, and fill the thought of his contem- 
 poraries. He is less known than a mountebank, or a new 
 dancer; his glory comes not home to him; it brings no pres- 
 ent, no perpetual reward, like the applauses that wait the 
 actor, or the actor-like murmur of the senate; and this, which 
 vexes, also lowers him; his noble nature begins to nourish 
 the base vices of jealousy, and the unwillingness to admire. 
 Goldsmith is forgotten in the presence of a puppet; he feels 
 it, and is mean; he expresses it, and is ludicrous. It is well 
 to say that great minds will not stoop to jealousy; in the 
 greatest minds, it is most frequent.-' Few authors are ever so 
 aware of the admiration they excite as to afford to be gener- 
 ous; and this melancholy truth revolts us with our own am- 
 
 1 See the long list of names furnished by Disraeli, in that most exquisite 
 work, " The Literary Character," vol. ii. p. 75. Plato, Xenophon, Chancer, 
 Corneille, Voltaire, Dryden, the Caracci, Domenico Venetiano, murdered by 
 his envious friend, and the gentle Castillo fainting away at the genius of 
 Murillo. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 61 
 
 bition. Shall we be demigods in our closets at the price of 
 sinking below mortality in the world? No! it was from this 
 deep sentiment of the unrealness of literary fame, of dissatis- 
 faction at the fruits it produced, of fear for the meanness it 
 engendered, that I resigned betimes all love for its career; 
 and if, by the restless desire that haunts men who think much 
 to write ever, I should be urged hereafter to literature, I will 
 sternly teach myself to persevere in the indifference to its 
 fame." 
 
 "You say as I would say," answered Vane, with his tran- 
 quil smile; "and your experience corroborates my theory. 
 Ambition, then, is not the root of happiness. Why more in 
 action than in letters? " 
 
 "Because," said Trevylyan, "in action we commonly gain 
 in our life all the honour we deserve: the public judge of 
 men better and more rapidly than of books. And he who 
 takes to himself in action a high and pure ambition, associates 
 it with so many objects, that, unlike literature, the failure of 
 one is balanced by the success of the other. He, the creator 
 of deeds, not resembling the creator of books, stands not alone; 
 he is eminently social; he has many comrades, and without 
 their aid he could not accomplish his designs. This divides 
 and mitigates the impatient jealousy against others. He 
 works for a cause, and knows early that he cannot monopolize 
 its whole glory; he shares what he is aware it is impossible 
 to engross. Besides, action leaves him no time for brooding 
 over disappointment. The author has consumed his youth in 
 a work, — it fails in glory. Can he write another work? Bid 
 him call back another youth ! But in action, the labour of the 
 mind is from day to day. A week replaces what a week has 
 lost, and all the aspirant's fame is of the present. It is 
 lipped by the Babel of the living world; he is ever on the 
 stage, and the spectators are ever ready to applaud. Thus 
 perpetually in the service of others self ceases to be his 
 world; he has no leisure to brood over real or imaginary 
 wrongs ; the excitement whirls on the machine till it is worn 
 out — " 
 
 "And kicked aside," said Vane, "with the broken lumber 
 
62 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 of men's other tools, in the chamber of their son's forgetful- 
 ness. Your man of action lasts but for an hour; the man of 
 letters lasts for ages." 
 
 "We live not for ages," answered Trevylyan; "our life is 
 on earth, and not in the grave." 
 
 *'But even grant," continued Vane — "and I for one will 
 concede the point — that posthumous fame is not worth the 
 living agonies that obtain it, how are you better off in your 
 poor and vulgar career of action? Would you assist the 
 rulers? — servility! The people? — folly! If you take the 
 great philosophical view which the worshippers of the past 
 rarely take, but which, unknown to them, is their sole ex- 
 cuse, — namely, that the changes which may benefit the future 
 unsettle the present; and that it is not the wisdom of practi- 
 cal legislation to risk the peace of our contemporaries in the 
 hope of obtaining happiness for their posterity, — to what sus- 
 picions, to what charges are you exposed! You are deemed 
 the foe of all liberal opinion, and you read your curses in the 
 eyes of a nation. But take the side of the people. What ca- 
 price, what ingratitude! You have professed so much in 
 theory, that you can never accomplish sufficient in practice. 
 Moderation becomes a crime; to be prudent is to be perfidious. 
 New demagogues, without temperance, because without prin- 
 ciple, outstrip you in the moment of your greatest services. 
 The public is the grave of a great man's deeds; it is never 
 sated; its maw is eternally open; it perpetually craves for 
 more. Where, in the history of the world, do you find the 
 gratitude of a people? You find fervour, it is true, but not 
 gratitude, — the fervour that exaggerates a benefit at one mo- 
 ment, but not the gratitude that remembers it the next year. 
 Once disappoint them, and all your actions, all your sacri- 
 fices, are swept from their remembrance forever; they break 
 the windows of the very house they have given you, and melt 
 down their medals into bullets. Who serves man, ruler or 
 peasant, serves the ungrateful ; and all the ambitious are but 
 types of a Wolsey or a De Witt." 
 
 "And what," said Trevjdyan, "consoles a man in the ills 
 that flesh is heir to, in that state of obscure repose, that se- 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 63 
 
 rene inactivity to which you woiihl confine him? Is it not 
 his conscience? Is it not his self-acquittal, or his self- 
 approval? " 
 
 "Doubtless," replied Vane. 
 
 "Be it so," answered the high-souled Trevylyan; "the same 
 consolation awaits us in action as in repose. We sedulously 
 pursue what we deem to be true glory. We are maligned; 
 but our soul acquits us. Could it do more in the scandal and 
 the prejudice that assail us in private life? You are silent; 
 but note how much deeper should be the comfort, how much 
 loftier the self-esteem; for if calumny attack us in a wilful 
 obscurity, what have we done to refute the calumny? How 
 have we served our species? Have we 'scorned delight and 
 loved laborious days '? Have we made the utmost of the 
 'talent' confided to our care? Have we done those good deeds 
 to our race upon which we can retire, — an 'Estate of Benefi- 
 cence, ' — from the malice of the world, and feel that our deeds 
 are our defenders? This is the consolation of virtuous ac- 
 tions; is it so of — even a virtuous — indolence?" 
 
 "You speak as a preacher," said Vane, — "I merely as a 
 calculator; you of virtue in affliction, I of a life in ease." 
 
 "Well, then, if the consciousness of perpetual endeavour 
 to advance our race be not alone happier than the life of ease, 
 let us see what this vaunted ease really is. Tell me, is it not 
 another name for ennui ? This state of quiescence, this ob- 
 jectless, dreamless torpor, this transition du lit a la table, de 
 la table au lit, — what more dreary and monotonous existence 
 can you devise? Is it pleasure in this inglorious existence to 
 think that you are serving pleasure? Is it freedom to be the 
 slave to self? For I hold," continued Trevylyan, "that this 
 jargon of 'consulting happiness,' this cant of living for our- 
 selves, is biit a mean as well as a false philosophy. Why this 
 eternal reference to self? Is self alone to be consulted? Is 
 even our happiness, did it truly consist in repose, really the 
 great end of life? I doubt if we cannot ascend higher. I 
 doubt if we cannot say with a great moralist, 'If virtue be 
 not estimable in itself, we can see nothing estimable in fol- 
 lowing it for the sake of a bargain. ' But, in fact, repose is 
 
64 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 the poorest of all delusions ; the very act of recurring to self 
 brings about us all those ills of self from which, in the tur- 
 moil of the world, we can escape. We become hypochon- 
 driacs. Our very health grows an object of painful possession. 
 We are so desirous to be well (for what is retirement without 
 health?) that we are ever fancying ourselves ill; and, like the 
 man in the 'Spectator,' we weigh ourselves daily, and live 
 but by grains and scruples. Retirement is happy only for 
 the poet, for to him it is not retirement. He secedes from 
 one world but to gain another, and he finds not ennui in seclu- 
 sion: why? Not because seclusion hath repose, but because it 
 hath occupation. In one word, then, I say of action and of 
 indolence, grant the same ills to both, and to action there is 
 the readier escape or the nobler consolation." 
 
 Vane shrugged his shoulders. "Ah, my dear friend," said 
 he, tapping his snuff-box with benevolent superiority, "you 
 are much younger than I am ! " 
 
 But these conversations, which Trevylyan and Vane often 
 held together, dull as I fear this specimen must seem to the 
 reader, had an inexpressible charm for Gertrude. She loved 
 the lofty and generous vein of philosophy which Trevylyan 
 embraced, and which, while it suited his ardent nature, con- 
 trasted a demeanour commonly hard and cold to all but her- 
 self. And young and tender as she was, his ambition infused 
 its spirit into her fine imagination, and that passion for en- 
 terprise which belongs inseparably to romance. She loved to 
 muse over his future lot, and in fancy to share its toils and 
 to exult in its triumphs. And if sometimes she asked herself 
 whether a career of action might not estrange him from her, 
 she had but to turn her gaze upon his watchful eye, — and lo, 
 he was by her side or at her feet! 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE IIIIIXE. G5 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GORCUM. — THE TOUR OF THE VIRTUES : A PHILOSOPHER'S 
 
 TALE. 
 
 It was a briglit and cheery morning as they glided by Gor- 
 cum. The boats pulling to the shore full of fishermen and 
 peasants in their national costume; the breeze freshly rip- 
 pling the waters ; the lightness of the blue sky ; the loud and 
 laughing voices from the boats, — all contributed to raise the 
 spirit, and fill it with that indescribable gladness which is 
 the physical sense of life. 
 
 The tower of the church, with its long windows and its 
 round dial, rose against the clear sky; and on a bench under 
 a green bush facing the water sat a jolly Hollander, refresh- 
 ing the breezes with the fumes of his national weed. 
 
 "How little it requires to make a journey pleasant, when 
 the companions are our friends ! " said Gertrude, as they 
 sailed along. "Nothing can be duller than these banks, noth-- 
 ing more delightful than this voyage." 
 
 " Yet what tries the affections of people for each other so 
 severely as a journey together?" said Vane. "That perpetual 
 companionship from which there is no escaping; that confine- 
 ment, in all our moments of ill-humour and listlessness, with' 
 persons who want us to look amused — ah, it is a severe or- 
 deal for friendship to pass through ! A post-chaise must have 
 jolted many an intimacy to death." 
 
 "You speak feelingly, dear father," said Gertrude, laugh- 
 ing; "and, I suspect, with a slight desire to be sarcastic upon 
 us. Yet, seriously, I should think that travel must be like 
 life, and that good persons must be always agreeable compan- 
 ions to each other." 
 
 " Good persons, my Gertrude ! " answered Vane, with a 
 smile. "Alas! I fear the good weary each other quite as 
 
 5 
 
66 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 nuich as the bad. Wliat say you, Trevylyan, — would Virtue 
 be a pleasant companion from Paris to Petersburg? Ah, I 
 see you intend to be on Gertrude's side of the question. Well 
 now, if I tell you a story, since stories are so much the fash- 
 ion with you, in which you shall find that the Virtues them- 
 selves actually made the experiment of a tour, will you 
 promise to attend to the moral?" 
 
 "Oh, dear father, anything for a story," cried Gertrude; 
 " especially from you, who have not told us one all the way. 
 Come, listen, Albert; nay, listen to your new rival." 
 
 And, pleased to see the vivacity of the invalid. Vane began 
 as follows : — 
 
 THE TOUR OF THE VIRTUES: 
 A philosopher's tale. 
 
 Once upon a time, several of the Virtues, weary of living 
 forever with the Bishop of Norwich, resolved to make a little 
 excursion ; accordingly, though they knew everything on earth 
 was very ill prepared to receive them, they thought they 
 might safely venture on a tour from Westminster Bridge to 
 Kichmond. The day was fine, the wind in their favour, 
 and as to entertainment, — why, there seemed, according to 
 Gertrude, to be no possibility of any disagreement among the 
 Virtues. 
 
 They took a boat at Westminster stairs ; and just as they 
 were about to push off, a poor woman, all in rags, with a 
 child in her arms, implored their compassion. Charity put 
 her hand into her reticule and took out a shilling. Justice, 
 turning round to look after the luggage, saw the folly which 
 Charity was about to commit. "Heavens! " cried Justice, 
 seizing poor Charity by the arm, "what are you doing? Have 
 you never read Political Economy? Don't you know that 
 indiscriminate almsgiving is only the encouragement to Idle- 
 ness, the mother of Vice? You a Virtue, indeed! I'm 
 ashamed of you. Get along with you, good woman; — yet 
 stay, there is a ticket for soup at the Mendicity Society; 
 they'll see if you're a proper object of compassion." But 
 Charity is quicker than Justice, and slipping her hand behind 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 67 
 
 her, the poor woman got the shilling and the ticket for soup 
 too. Economy and Generosity saw the double gift. "What 
 waste!" cried Economy, frowning; "what! a ticket and a 
 shilling? either would have sufficed." 
 
 " Either ! " said Generosity, " fie ! Charity should have 
 given the poor creature half-a-crown, and Justice a dozen 
 tickets! " So the next ten minutes were consumed in a quarrel 
 between the four Virtues, which would have lasted all the way 
 to Richmond, if Courage had not advised them to get on shore 
 and fight it out. Upon this, the Virtues suddenly perceived 
 they had a little forgotten themselves, and Generosity offering 
 the first apology, they made it up, and went on very agreeably 
 for the next mile or two. 
 
 The day now grew a little overcast, and a shower seemed at 
 hand. Prudence, who had on a new bonnet, suggested the 
 propriety of putting to shore for half an hour; Courage was 
 for braving the rain ; but, as most of the Virtues are ladies, 
 Prudence carried it. Just as they were about to land, an- 
 other boat cut in before them very uncivilly, and gave theirs 
 such a shake that Charity was all but overboard. The com- 
 pany on board the uncivil boat, who evidently thought the 
 Virtues extremely low persons, for they had nothing very fash- 
 ionable about their exterior, burst out laughing at Charity 's 
 discomposure, especially as a large basket full of buns, which 
 Charity carried with her for any hungry-looking children she 
 might encounter at Richmond, fell pounce into the water. 
 Courage was all on fire; he twisted his mustache, and would 
 have made an onset on the enemy, if, to his great indignation, 
 Meekness had not forestalled him, by stepping mildly into 
 the hostile boat and offering both cheeks to the foe. This 
 was too much even for the incivility of the boatmen; they 
 made their excuses to the Virtues, and Courage, who is no 
 bully, thought himself bound discontentedly to accept them. 
 But oh! if you had seen how Courage used Meekness after- 
 wards, you could not have believed it possible that one Virtue 
 could be so enraged with another. This quarrel between the 
 two threw a damp on the party; and they proceeded on their 
 voyage, when the shower was over, with anything but cor- 
 
68 THE PILGRBIS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 cliality. I spare you the little squabbles that took place in 
 the general conversation, — how Economy found fault with all 
 the villas by the way, and Temperance expressed becoming 
 indignation at the luxuries of the City barge. They arrived 
 at Richmond, and Temperance was appointed to order the 
 dinner; meanwhile Hospitality, walking in the garden, fell 
 in with a large party of Irishmen, and asked them to join 
 the repast. 
 
 Imagine the long faces of Economy and Prudence, when 
 they saw the addition to the company ! Hospitality was all 
 spirits; he rubbed his hands and called for champagne with 
 the tone of a younger brother. Temperance soon grew scan- 
 dalized, and Modesty herself coloured at some of the jokes; 
 but Hospitality, who was now half seas over, called the one 
 a milksop, and swore at the other as a prude. Away went 
 the hours; it was time to return, and they made down to the 
 water-side, thoroughly out of temper with one another. Econ- 
 omy and Generosity quarrelling all the way about the bill 
 and the waiters. To make up the sum of their mortification, 
 they passed a boat where all the company were in the best 
 possible spirits, laughing and whooping like mad; and dis- 
 covered these jolly companions to be two or three agree- 
 able Vices, who had put themselves under the management 
 of Good Temper. 
 
 "So you see, Gertrude, that even the Virtues may fall at 
 loggerheads with each other, and pass a very sad time of it, 
 if they happen to be of opposite dispositions, and have for- 
 gotten to take Good Temper with them." 
 
 "Ah," said Gertrude, "but you have overloaded your boat; 
 too many Virtues might contradict one another, but not a 
 few." 
 
 "Voilh, ce que veux dire," said Vane; "but listen to the 
 sequel of my tale, which now takes a new moral." 
 
 At the end of the voyage, and after a long, sulky silence. 
 Prudence said, with a thoughtful air, "My dear friends, I 
 have been thinking that as long as we keep so entirely to- 
 gether, never mixing with the rest of the world, we shall 
 waste our lives in quarrelling amongst ourselves and run the 
 
 I 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 69 
 
 risk of being still less liked and sought after than we already 
 are. You know that we are none of us popular; every one is 
 quite contented to see us represented in a vaudeville, or de- 
 scribed in an essay. Charity, indeed, has her name often 
 taken in vain at a bazaar or a subscription; and the miser as 
 often talks of the duty he owes to me, when he sends the 
 stranger from his door or his grandson to jail: but still we 
 only resemble so many wild beasts, whom everybody likes to 
 see but nobody cares to possess. Now, I propose that we 
 should all separate and take up our abode with some mortal 
 or other for a year, with the power of changing at the end of 
 that time should we not feel ourselves comfortable, — that is, 
 should we not find that we do all the good we intend; let us 
 try the experiment, and on this day twelvemonths let us all 
 meet under the largest oak in Windsor Forest, and recount 
 what has befallen us." Prudence ceased, as she always does 
 when she has said enough; and, delighted at the project, the 
 Virtues agreed to adopt it on the spot. They were enchanted 
 at the idea of setting up for themselves, and each not doubt- 
 ing his or her success, — for Economy in her heart thought 
 Generosity no Virtue at all, and Meekness looked on Courage 
 as little better than a heathen. 
 
 Generosity, being the most eager and active of all the Vir- 
 tues, set off first on his journey. Justice followed, and kept 
 up with him, though at a more even pace. Charity never 
 heard a sigh, or saw a squalid face, but she stayed to cheer 
 and console the sufferer, — a kindness which somewhat re- 
 tarded her progress. 
 
 Courage espied a travelling carriage, with a man and his 
 wife in it quarrelling most conjugally, and he civilly begged 
 he might be permitted to occupy the vacant seat opposite the 
 lady. Economy still lingered, inquiring for the cheapest 
 inns. Poor Modesty looked round and sighed, on finding 
 herself so near to London, where she was almost wholly un- 
 known; but resolved to bend her course thither for two rea- 
 sons: first, for the novelty of the thing; and, secondly, not 
 liking to expose herself to any risks by a journey on the Con- 
 tinent. Prudence, though the first to project, was the last to 
 
70 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 execute ; and therefore resolved to remain where she was for 
 that night, and take daylight for her travels. 
 
 The year rolled on, and the Virtues, punctual to the ap- 
 pointment, met under the oak-tree ; they all came nearly at 
 the same time, excepting Economy, who had got into a return 
 post-chaise, the horses to which, having been forty miles in 
 the course of the morning, had foundered by the way, and re- 
 tarded her journey till night set in. The Virtues looked sad 
 and sorrowful, as people are wont to do after a long and fruit- 
 less journey; and, somehow or other, such was the wearing 
 effect of their intercourse with the world, that they appeared 
 wonderfully diminished in size. 
 
 "Ah, my dear Generosity," said Prudence, with a sigh, 
 "as you were the first to set out on your travels, pray let us 
 hear your adventures first." 
 
 "You must know, my dear sisters," said Generosity, "that 
 I had not gone many miles from you before I came to a small 
 country town, in which a marching regiment was quartered, 
 and at an open window I beheld, leaning over a gentleman's 
 chair, the most beautiful creature imagination ever pictured; 
 her eyes shone out like two suns of perfect happiness, and 
 she was almost cheerful enough to have passed for Good Tem- 
 per herself. The gentleman over whose chair she leaned was 
 her husband; they had been married six weeks; he was a 
 lieutenant Math £100 a year besides his pay. Greatly affected 
 by their poverty, I instantly determined, without a second 
 thought, to ensconce myself in the heart of this charming 
 girl. During the first hour in my new residence I made many 
 wise reflections such as — that Love never was so perfect as 
 when accompanied by Poverty ; what a vulgar error it was to 
 call the unmarried state 'Single Blessedness; ' how wrong it 
 was of us Virtues never to have tried the marriage bond; and 
 what a falsehood it was to say that husbands neglected their 
 wives, for never was there anything in nature so devoted as 
 the love of a husband — six weeks married ! 
 
 "The next morning, before breakfast, as the charming 
 Fanny was waiting for her husband, who had not yet finished 
 his toilet, a poor, wretched-looking object appeared at the 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 71 
 
 window, tearing her hair and wringing her hands ; her hus- 
 band had that morning been dragged to prison, and her seven 
 children had fought for the last mouldy crust. Promjjted by 
 me, Fanny, without inquiring further into the matter, drew 
 from her silken purse a five-pound note, and gave it to the 
 beggar, who departed more amazed than grateful. Soon after, 
 the lieutenant appeared. ' What the devil, another bill ! ' 
 muttered he, as he tore the yellow wafer from a large, 
 square, folded, bluish piece of paper. 'Oh, ah! confound the 
 fellow, he must be paid. I must trouble you, Fanny, for 
 £15 to pay this saddler's bill.' 
 
 "'Fifteen pounds, love?' stammered Fanny, blushing. 
 
 "'Yes, dearest, the £15 I gave you yesterday.' 
 
 "'I have only £10,' said Fanny, hesitatingly; 'for such 
 a poor, wretched-looking creature was here just now, that 
 I was obliged to give her £5.' 
 
 '"Five pounds? good Heavens! ' exclaimed the astonished 
 husband; 'I shall have no more money this three weeks.' He 
 frowned, he bit his lips, nay, he even wrung his hands, and 
 walked up and down the room; worse still, he broke forth 
 with — ' Surely, madam, you did not suppose, when you mar- 
 ried a lieutenant in a marching regiment, that he could afford 
 to indulge in the whim of giving £5 to every mendicant who 
 held out her hand to you? You did not, I say, madam, 
 imagine ' — but the bridegroom was interrupted by the con- 
 vulsive sobs of his wife : it was their first quarrel, they were 
 but six weeks married; he looked at her for one moment 
 sternly, the next he was at her feet. 'Forgive me, dearest 
 Fanny, — forgive me, for I cannot forgive myself. I was too 
 great a wretch to say what I did; and do believe, my own 
 Fanny, that while I may be too poor to indulge you in it, I 
 do from my heart admire so noble, so disinterested, a gen- 
 erosity.' Xot a little proud did I feel to have been the cause 
 of this exemplary husband's admiration for his amiable wife, 
 and sincerely did I rejoice at having taken up my abode with 
 these poor people. But not to tire you, my dear sisters, with 
 the minutiae of detail, I shall briefly say that things did not 
 long remain in this delightful position; for before many 
 
72 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 months had elapsed, poor Fanny had to bear with her hus- 
 band's increased and more frequent storms of passion, un- 
 foUowed by any halcyon and honeymoon suings for forgive- 
 ness: for at my instigation every shilling went; and when 
 there were no more to go, her trinkets and even her clothes 
 followed. The lieutenant became a complete brute, and even 
 allowed his unbridled tongue to call me — me, sisters, me / — 
 'heartless Extravagance.' His despicable brother-officers and 
 their gossiping wives were no better; for they did nothing 
 but animadvert upon my Fanny's ostentation and absurdity, 
 for by such names had they the impertinence to call me. 
 Thus grieved to the soul to find myself the cause of all poor 
 Fanny's misfortunes, I resolved at the end of the year to leave 
 her, being thoroughly convinced that, however amiable and 
 praiseworthy I might be in myself, I was totally unfit to be 
 bosom friend and adviser to the wife of a lieutenant in a 
 marching regiment, with only £100 a year besides his pay." 
 
 The Virtues groaned their sympathy with the unfortunate 
 Fanny; and Prudence, turning to Justice, said, "I long to 
 hear what you have been doing, for I am certain you cannot 
 have occasioned harm to any one." 
 
 Justice shook her head and said: "Alas! I find that there 
 are times and places when even I do better not to appear, as 
 a short account of my adventures will prove to you. No 
 sooner had I left you than I instantly repaired to India, and 
 took up my abode with a Brahmin, I was much shocked by 
 the dreadful inequalities of condition that reigned in the sev- 
 eral castes, and I longed to relieve the poor Pariah from his 
 ignominious destiny; accordingly I set seriously to work on 
 reform. I insisted upon the iniquity of abandoning men 
 from their birth to an irremediable state of contempt, from 
 which no virtue could exalt them. The Brahmins looked 
 upon my Brahmin with ineffable horror. They called me the 
 most wicked of vices; they saw no distinction between Justice 
 and Atheism. I uprooted their society — that was sufficient 
 crime. But the worst was, that the Pariahs themselves re- 
 garded me with suspicion; they thought it unnatural in a 
 Brahmin to care for a Pariah! And one called me 'Madness,' 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 73 
 
 another, 'Ambition,' and a third, 'The Desire to innovate.' 
 My poor Brahmin led a miserable life of it; when one day, 
 after observing, at my dictation, that he thought a Pariah's 
 life as much entitled to respect as a cow's, he was hurried 
 away by the priests and secretly broiled on the altar as a fit- 
 ting reward for his sacrilege. I fled hither in great tribula- 
 tion, persuaded that in some countries even Justice may do 
 harm." 
 
 "As for me," said Charity, not waiting to be asked, "I 
 grieve to say that I was silly enough to take up my abode 
 with an old lady in Dublin, who never knew what discretion 
 was, and always acted from impulse ; my instigation was irre- 
 sistible, and the money she gave in her drives through the 
 suburbs of Dublin was so lavishly spent that it kept all the 
 rascals of the city in idleness and whiskey. I found, to my 
 great horror, that I was a main cause of a terrible epidemic, 
 and that to give alms without discretion was to spread pov- 
 erty without help. I left the city when my year was out, 
 and as ill-luck would have it, just at the time when I was 
 most wanted." 
 
 "And oh," cried Hospitality, "I went to Ireland also. I 
 fixed my abode with a squireen; I ruined him in a year, and 
 only left him because he had no longer a hovel to keep 
 me in." 
 
 "As for myself," said Temperance, "I entered the breast 
 of an English legislator, and he brought in a bill against ale- 
 houses; the consequence was, that the labourers took to gin; 
 and I have been forced to confess that Temperance may be 
 too zealous when she dictates too vehemently to others." 
 
 "Well," said Courage, keeping more in the background 
 than he had ever done before, and looking rather ashamed of 
 himself, "that travelling carriage I got into belonged to a 
 German general and his wife, who were returning to their 
 own country. Growing very cold as we proceeded, she wrapped 
 me up in a polonaise; but the cold increasing, I inadvertently 
 crept into her bosom. Once there I could not get out, and 
 from thenceforward the poor general had considerably the 
 worst of it. She became so provoking that I wondered how 
 
74 THE PILGRmS OF THE EKINE. 
 
 lie could refrain from an explosion. To do him justice, he 
 did at last threaten to get out of the carriage ; upon which, 
 roused by me, she collared him — and conquered. When he 
 got to his own district, things grew worse, for if any aide-de- 
 camp oifeuded her she insisted that he might be publicly re- 
 primanded; and should the poor general refuse she would 
 with her own hands confer a caning upon the delinquent. 
 The additional force she had gained in me was too much odds 
 against the poor general, and he died of a broken heart, six 
 months after my liaison with his wife. She after this be- 
 came so dreaded and detested, that a conspiracy was formed 
 to poison her; this daunted even me, so I left her without de- 
 lay, — et me void I " 
 
 "Humph," said Meekness, with an air of triumph, "I, at 
 least, have been more successful than you. On seeing much 
 in the papers of the cruelties practised by the Turks on the 
 Greeks, I thought my presence would enable the poor sufferers 
 to bear their misfortunes calmly. I went to Greece, then, at 
 a moment when a well-planned and practicable scheme of 
 emancipating themselves from the Turkish yoke was arousing 
 their youth. Without confining myself to one individual, I 
 flitted from breast to breast; I meekened the whole nation; 
 my remonstrances against the insurrection succeeded, and I 
 had the satisfaction of leaving a whole people ready to be 
 killed or strangled with the most Christian resignation in the 
 world." 
 
 The Virtues, who had been a little cheered by the opening 
 self-complacence of Meekness, would not, to her great aston- 
 ishment, allow that she had succeeded a whit more happily 
 than her sisters, and called next upon Modesty for her 
 confession. 
 
 " You know, " said that amiable young lady, " that I went 
 to London in search of a situation. I spent three months of 
 the twelve in going from house to house, but I could not get a 
 single person to receive me. The ladies declared that they 
 never saw so old-fashioned a gawkey, and civilly recom- 
 mended me to their abigails; the abigails turned me round 
 with a stare, and then pushed me down to the kitchen and the 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 75 
 
 fat scuUion-uiaiils, who assured me that, 'in the respectable 
 families they had the honour to live in, they had never even 
 heard of my name.' One young housemaid, just from the 
 country, did indeed receive me with some sort of civility; but 
 she very soon lost me in the servants' hall. I now took refuge 
 with the other sex, as the least uncourteous. I was fortunate 
 enough to find a young gentleman of remarkable talents, who 
 welcomed me with open arms. He was full of learning, gen- 
 tleness, and honesty. I had only one rival, — Ambition. We 
 both contended for an absolute empire over him. Whatever 
 Ambition suggested, I damped. Did Ambition urge him to 
 begin a book, I persuaded him it was not worth publication. 
 Did he get up, full of knowledge, and instigated by my rival, 
 to make a speech (for he was in parliament), I shocked him 
 with the sense of his assurance, I made his voice droop and 
 his accents falter. At last, with an indignant sigh, my rival 
 left him; he retired into the country, took orders, and re- 
 nounced a career he had fondly hoped would be serviceable to 
 others; but finding I did not suffice for his happiness, and 
 piqued at his melancholy, I left him before the end of the 
 year, and he has since taken to drinking!" 
 
 The eyes of the Virtues were all turned to Prudence. She 
 was their last hope. "I am just where I set out," said that 
 discreet Virtue; "I have done neither good nor harm. To 
 avoid temptation I went and lived with a hermit to whom I 
 soon found that I could be of no use beyond warning him not 
 to overboil his peas and lentils, not to leave his door open 
 when a storm threatened, and not to fill his pitcher too full at 
 the neighbouring spring. I am thus the only one of you that 
 never did harm ; but only because I am the only one of you 
 that never had an opportunity of doing it! In a word," con- 
 tinued Prudence, thoughtfully, — "in a word, my friends, cir- 
 cumstances are necessary to the Virtues themselves. Had, 
 for instance. Economy changed with Generosity, and gone to 
 the poor lieutenant's wife, and had I lodged with the Irish 
 squireen instead of Hospitality, what misfortunes would have 
 been saved to both ! Alas ! I perceive we lose all our efficacy 
 when we are misplaced} and then, though in reality Virtues, 
 
76 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIi^E. 
 
 we operate as Vices. Circumstances must be favourable to 
 our exertions, and harmonious with our nature ; and we lose 
 our very divinity unless Wisdom direct our footsteps to the 
 home we should inhabit and the dispositions we should 
 govern." 
 
 The story was ended, and the travellers began to dispute 
 about its mora,!. Here let us leave them. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 COLOGNE. — THE TRACES OF THE ROMAN YOKE. — THE CHURCH 
 OF ST. MARIA. TREVYLYAn's REFLECTIOXS OX THE MO- 
 NASTIC LIFE. THE TOMB OF THE THREE KINGS. AN 
 
 EVENING EXCURSION ON THE RHINE. 
 
 EoME — magnificent Eome! wherever the pilgrim wends, 
 the traces of thy dominion greet his eyes. Still in the heart 
 of the bold German race is graven the print of the eagle's 
 claws; and amidst the haunted regions of the Rhine we pause 
 to wonder at the great monuments of the Italian yoke. 
 
 At Cologne our travellers rested for some days. They were 
 in the city to which the camp of Marcus Agrippa had given 
 birth; that spot had resounded with the armed tread of the 
 legions of Trajan. In that city, Vitellius, Sylvanus, were 
 proclaimed emperors. By that church did the latter receive 
 his death. 
 
 As they passed round the door they saw some peasants 
 loitering on the sacred ground; and when they noted the 
 delicate cheek of Gertrude they uttered their salutations with 
 more than common respect. Where they then were the build- 
 ing swept round in a circular form ; and at its base it is sup- 
 posed by tradition to retain something of the ancient Roman 
 masonry. Just before them rose the spire of a plain and un- 
 adorned church, singularly contrasting the pomp of the old 
 with the simplicity of the innovating creed. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 77 
 
 The church of St. Maria occupies the site of the Roman 
 Capitol, and the place retains the Roman name; and still 
 something in the aspect of the people betrays the hereditary- 
 blood. 
 
 Gertrude, whose nature was strongly impressed with the 
 venerating character, was fond of visiting the old Gothic 
 churches, which, with so eloquent a moral, unite the living 
 with the dead. 
 
 " Pause for a moment, " said Trevylyan, before they entered 
 the church of St. Mary. " What recollections crowd upon us ! 
 On the site of the Roman Capitol a Christian church and a 
 convent are erected! By whom? The mother of Charles 
 Martel, — the Conqueror of the Saracen, the arch-hero of 
 Christendom itself! And to these scenes and calm retreats, 
 to the cloisters of the convent once belonging to this church, 
 fled the bruised spirit of a royal sufferer, — the victim of 
 Richelieu, — the unfortunate and ambitious Mary de Medicis. 
 Alas ! the cell and the convent are but a vain emblem of that 
 desire to fly to God which belongs to Distress; the solitude 
 soothes, but the monotony recalls, regret. And for my own 
 part in my frequent tours through Catholic countries, I never 
 saw the still walls in which monastic vanity hoped to shut 
 out the world, but a melancholy came over me ! What hearts 
 at war with themselves! what unceasing regrets! what pin- 
 ings after the past ! what long and beautiful years devoted to 
 a moral grave, by a momentary rashness, an impulse, a dis- 
 appointment! But in these churches the lesson is more im- 
 pressive and less sad. The weary heart has ceased to ache; 
 the burning pulses are still; the troubled spirit has flown to 
 the only rest which is not a deceit. Power and love, hope 
 and fear, avarice, ambition, — they are quenched at last! 
 Death is the only monastery, the tomb is the only cell." 
 
 "Your passion is ever for active life," said Gertrude. "You 
 allow no charm to solitude, and contemplation to you seems 
 torture. If any great sorrow ever come upon you, you will 
 never retire to seclusion as its balm. You will plunge into 
 the world, and lose your individual existence in the universal 
 rush of life." 
 
78 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 " Ah, talk not of sorrow ! " said Trevyly an, wildly. " Let 
 us enter the church." 
 
 They went afterwards to the celebrated cathedral, which is 
 considered one of the noblest of the architectural triumphs of 
 Germany; but it is yet more worthy of notice from the Pil- 
 grim of Romance than the searcher after antiquity, for here, 
 behind the grand altar, is the Tomb of the Three Kings of 
 Cologne, — the three worshippers whom tradition humbled to 
 our Saviour. Legend is rife with a thousand tales of the 
 relics of this tomb. The Three Kings of Cologne are the 
 tutelary names of that golden superstition which has often 
 more votaries than the religion itself from which it springs : 
 and to Gertrude the simple story of Lucille sufficed to make 
 her for the moment credulous of the sanctitj'' of the spot. 
 Behind the tomb three Gothic windows cast their "dim, re- 
 ligious light " over the tessellated pavement and along the 
 Ionic pillars. They found some of the more credulous be- 
 lievers in the authenticity of the relics kneeling before the 
 tomb, and they arrested their steps, fearful to disturb the 
 superstition which is never without something of sanctity 
 when contented with prayer and forgetful of persecution. 
 The bones of the Magi are still supposed to consecrate the 
 tomb, and on the higher part of the monument the artist has 
 delineated their adoration to the infant Saviour. 
 
 That evening came on with a still and tranquil beauty, and 
 as the sun hastened to its close they launched their boat for 
 an hour or two's excursion upon the Rhine. Gertrude was in 
 that happy mood when the quiet of nature is enjo3'ed like a 
 bath for the soul, and the presence of him she so idolized 
 deepened that stillness into a more delicious and subduing 
 calm. Little did she dream as the boat glided over the 
 water, and the towers of Cologne rose in the blue air of even- 
 ing, how few were those hours that divided her from the 
 tomb! But, in looking back to the life of one we have loved, 
 how dear is the thought that the latter days were the days of 
 light, that the cloud never chilled the beauty of the setting 
 sun, and that if the years of existence Avere brief, all that ex- 
 istence has most tender, most sacred, was crowded into that 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 79 
 
 space! Xothing dark, then, or bitter, rests with our remem- 
 brance of the lost : we are the mourners, but pity is not for 
 the mourned, — our grief is purely selfish ; when we turn to its 
 object, the hues of happiness are round it, and that very love 
 which is the parent of our woe was the consolation, the 
 triumph, of the departed! 
 
 The majestic Ehine was calm as a lake ; the splashing of 
 the oar only broke the stillness, and after a long pause in 
 their conversation, Gertrude, putting her hand on Trevylyan's 
 arm, reminded him of a promised story : for he too had moods 
 of abstraction, from which, in her turn, she loved to lure him ; 
 and his voice to her had become a sort of want. 
 
 " Let it be, " said she, " a tale suited to the hour ; no fierce 
 tradition, — nay, no grotesque fable, but of the tenderer dye 
 of superstition. Let it be of love, of woman's love, — of the 
 love that defies the grave : for surely even after death it lives ; 
 and heaven would scarcely be heaven if memory were banished 
 from its blessings." 
 
 "I recollect," said Trevylyan, after a slight pause, "a short 
 German legend, the simplicity of Avhich touched me much 
 when I heard it; but," added he, with a slight smile, "so 
 much more faithful appears in the legend the love of the 
 woman than that of the man, that / at least ought scarcely 
 to recite it." 
 
 "Xay," said Gertrude, tenderly, "the fault of the inconstant 
 only heightens our gratitude to the faithful." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE SOUL IX purgatory; OR LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH. 
 
 The angels strimg their harps in heaven, and their music 
 went up like a stream of odours to the pavilions of the Most 
 High ; but the harp of Seralim was sweeter than that of his 
 
80 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 fellows, and the Voice of the Invisible One (for the angels 
 themselves know not the glories of Jehovah — only far in the 
 depths of heaven they see one Unsleeping Eye watching for- 
 ever over Creation) was heard saying, — 
 
 " Ask a gift for the love that burns in thy song, and it shall 
 be given thee." And Seralim answered, — 
 
 "There is in that place which men call Purgatory, and 
 which is the escape from hell, but the painful porch of heaven, 
 many souls that adore Thee, and yet are punished justly for 
 their sins; grant me the boon to visit them at times, and sol- 
 ace their suffering by the hymns of the harp that is conse- 
 crated to Thee!" 
 
 And the Voice answered, — 
 
 "Thy prayer is heard, gentlest of the angels! and it 
 seems good to Him who chastises but from love. Go ! Thou 
 hast thy will." 
 
 Then the angel sang the praises of God ; and when the song 
 was done he rose from his azure throne at the right hand of 
 Gabriel, and, spreading his rainbow wings, he flew to that 
 melancholy orb which, nearest to earth, echoes with the 
 shrieks of souls that by torture become pure. There the un- 
 happy ones see from afar the bright courts they are hereafter 
 to obtain, and the shapes of glorious beings, who, fresh from 
 the Fountains of Immortality, walk amidst the gardens of 
 Paradise, and feel that their happiness hath no morrow ; and 
 this thought consoles amidst their torments, and makes the 
 true difference between Purgatory and Hell. 
 
 Then the angel folded his wings, and entering the crystal 
 gates, sat down upon a blasted rock and struck his divine 
 lyre, and a peace fell over the wretched; the demon ceased 
 to torture and the victim to wail. As sleep to the mourners 
 of earth was the song of the angel to the souls of the purify- 
 ing star : one only voice amidst the general stillness seemed 
 not lulled by the angel ; it was the voice of a woman, and it 
 continued to cry out with a sharp cry, — 
 
 "Oh, Adenheim, Adenheim! mourn not for the lost! " 
 
 The angel struck chord after chord, till his most skilful 
 melodies were exhausted ; but still the solitary voice, unheed- 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 81 
 
 ing — unconscious of — the sweetest harp of the angel choir, 
 cried out, — 
 
 "Oh, Adenheim, Adenheim! mourn not for the lost! " 
 
 Then Seralim's interest was aroused, and approaching the 
 spot whence the voice came, he saw the spirit of a young and 
 beautiful girl chained to a rock, and the demons lying idly by. 
 And Seralim said to the demons, "Doth the song lull ye thus 
 to rest? " 
 
 And they answered, "Her care for another is bitterer than 
 all our torments; therefore are we idle." 
 
 Then the angel approached the spirit, and said in a voice 
 which stilled her cry — for in what state do we outlive sym- 
 pathy? — "Wherefore, daughter of earth, wherefore wailest 
 thou with the same plaintive wail; and why doth the harp 
 that soothes the most guilty of thy companions fail in its 
 melody with thee?" 
 
 "0 radiant stranger," answered the poor spirit, "thou 
 speakest to one who on earth loved God's creature more than 
 God; therefore is she thus justly sentenced. But I know 
 that my poor Adenheim mourns ceaselessly for me, and the 
 thought of his sorrow is more intolerable to me than all that 
 the demons can inflict." 
 
 "And how knowest thou that he laments thee? " asked the 
 angel. 
 
 "Because I know with what agony I should have mourned 
 for Aiw," replied the spirit, simply. 
 
 The divine nature of the angel was touched ; for love is the 
 nature of the sons of heaven. "And how," said he, "can I 
 minister to thy sorrow?" 
 
 A transport seemed to agitate the spirit, and she lifted up 
 her mistlike and impalpable arms, and cried, — 
 
 "Give me — oh, give me to return to earth, but for one little 
 hour, that I may visit my Adenheim; and that, concealing 
 from him my present sufferings, I may comfort him in his 
 own." 
 
 " Alas ! " said the angel, turning away his eyes, — for angels 
 may not weep in the sight of others, — "I could, indeed, grant 
 thee this boon, but thou knowest not the penalty. For the 
 
 6 
 
82 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 souls in Purgatory may return to Earth, but heavy is the sen- 
 tence that awaits their return. In a word, for one hour on 
 earth thou must add a thousand years to the torture of thy 
 confinement here ! " 
 
 "Is that all?" cried the spirit. "Willingly then will I 
 brave the doom. Ah, surely they love not in heaven, or thou 
 wouldst know, Celestial Visitant, that one hour of consola- 
 tion to the one we love is worth a thousand ages of torture to 
 ourselves! Let me comfort and convince my Adenheim; no 
 matter what becomes of me." 
 
 Then the angel looked on high, and he saw in far distant 
 regions, which in that orb none else could discern, the rays 
 that parted from the all-guarding Eye; and heard the Voice 
 of the Eternal One bidding him act as his pity whispered. 
 He looked on the spirit, and her shadowy arms stretched 
 pleadingly towards him ; he uttered the word that loosens the 
 bars of the gate of Purgatory ; and lo, the spirit had re-entered 
 the human world. 
 
 It was night in the halls of the lord of Adenheim, and he 
 sat at the head of his glittering board. Loud and long was 
 the laugh, and merry the jest that echoed round; and the 
 laugh and the jest of the lord of Adenheim were louder and 
 merrier than all. And by his right side sat a beautiful lad}'; 
 and ever and anon he turned from others to whisper soft 
 vows in her ear. 
 
 "And oh," said the bright dame of Falkenberg, "th}^ words 
 what ladye can believe? Didst thou not utter the same 
 oaths, and promise the same love, to Ida, the fair daughter of 
 Loden, and now but three little months have closed upon her 
 grave? " 
 
 "By my halidom," quoth the young lord of Adenheim, 
 " thou dost thy beauty marvellous injustice. Ida ! Nay, thou 
 mockest me ; / love the daughter of Loden ! Why, how then 
 should I be worthy thee? A few gay words, a few j^assing 
 smiles, — behold all the love Adenheim ever bore to Ida. 
 Was it my fault if the poor fool misconstrued such common 
 courtesy? Nay, dearest lady, this heart is virgin to thee." 
 
 "And what! " said the lady of Falkenberg, as she suffered 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 83 
 
 the arm of Adenheim to encircle her slender waist, "didst 
 thou not grieve for her loss?" 
 
 "Why, verily, yes, for the first week; but in thy bright 
 eyes I found ready consolation." 
 
 At this moment, the lord of Adenheim thought he heard a 
 deep sigh behind him; he turned, but saw nothing, save a 
 slight mist that gradually faded away, and vanished in the 
 distance. Where was the necessity for Ida to reveal herself? 
 
 "And thou didst not, then, do thine errand to thy lover?" 
 said Seralim, as the spirit of the wronged Ida returned to 
 Purgatory. 
 
 "Bid the demons recommence their torture," was poor Ida's 
 answer. 
 
 " And was it for this that thou added a thousand years to 
 thy doom?" 
 
 "Alas! " answered Ida, "after the single hour I have en- 
 dured on Earth, there seems to be but little terrible in a 
 thousand fresh years of Purgatory ! " ^ 
 
 "What! is the story ended? " asked Gertrude. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Nay, surely the thousand years were not added to poor 
 Ida's doom; and Seralim bore her back with him to 
 Heaven? " 
 
 "The legend saith no more. The writer was contented to 
 show us the perpetuity of woman's love — " 
 
 "And its reward," added Vane. 
 
 "It was not /who drew that last conclusion, Albert," whis- 
 pered Gertrude. 
 
 1 This story is principally borrowed from a foreign soil. It seemed to the 
 author worthy of being transferred to an English one, although he fears that 
 much of its singular beauty in the original has been lost by the way. 
 
84 THE PILGRBIS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SCENERY OF THE RHIXE ANALOGOUS TO THE GERMAN" 
 LITERARY GENIUS. THE DRACHENFELS. 
 
 On leaving Cologne, the stream winds round among banks 
 that do not yet fulfil the promise of the Rhine; but they in- 
 crease in interest as you leave Surdt and Godorf . The pecu- 
 liar character of the river does not, however, really appear, 
 until by degrees the Seven Mountains, and "The castled 
 Crag of Drachenfels " above them all, break upon the eye. 
 Around Kieder Cassel and Rheidt the vines lie thick and clus- 
 tering; and, by the shore, you see from place to place the 
 islands stretching their green length along, and breaking the 
 exulting tide. Village rises upon village, and viewed from 
 the distance as you sail, the pastoral errors that enamoured us 
 of the village life crowd thick and fast upon us. So still do 
 these hamlets seem, so sheltered from the passions of the 
 world, — as if the passions were not like winds, only felt 
 where they breathe, and invisible save by their effects! Leap- 
 ing into the broad bosom of the Rhine come many a stream 
 and rivulet upon either side. Spire upon spire rises and 
 sinks as you sail on. Mountain and city, the solitary island, 
 the castled steep, like the dreams of ambition, suddenly ap- 
 pear, proudly swell, and dimly fade away. 
 
 "You begin now," said Trevylyan, "to understand the 
 character of the German literature. The Rhine is an emblem 
 of its luxuriance, its fertility, its romance. The best com- 
 mentary to the German genius is a visit to the German scen- 
 ery. The mighty gloom of the Hartz, the feudal towers that 
 look over vines and deep valleys on the legendary Rhine; the 
 gigantic remains of antique power, profusely scattered over 
 plain, mount, and forest; the thousand mixed recollections 
 that hallow the ground; the stately Roman, the stalwart 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 85 
 
 Goth, the chivalry of the feudal age, and the dim brotherhood 
 of the ideal world, have here alike their record and their 
 remembrance. And over such scenes wanders the young Ger- 
 man student. Instead of the pomp and luxury of the English 
 traveller, the thousand devices to cheat the way, he has but 
 his volume in his hand, his knapsack at his back. From such 
 scenes he draws and hives all that various store which after 
 years ripen to invention. Hence the florid mixture of the 
 German muse, — the classic, the romantic, the contemplative, 
 the philosophic, and the superstitious; each the result of 
 actual meditation over different scenes ; each the produce of 
 separate but confused recollections. As the Ehine flows, so 
 flows the national genius, by mountain and valley, the wildest 
 solitude, the sudden spires of ancient cities, the mouldered 
 castle, the stately monastery, the humble cot, — grandeur and 
 homeliness, history and superstition, truth and fable, suc- 
 ceeding one another so as to blend into a whole. 
 
 "But," added Trevylyan, a moment afterwards, "the Ideal 
 is passing slowly away from the German mind; a spirit for 
 the more active and the more material literature is spring- 
 ing up amongst them. The revolution of mind gathers on, 
 preceding stormy events; and the memories that led their 
 grandsires to contemplate will urge the youth of the next 
 generation to dare and to act." ^ 
 
 Thus conversing, they continued their voyage, with a fair 
 wave and beneath a lucid sky. 
 
 The vessel now glided beside the Seven Mountains and the 
 Drachenfels. 
 
 The sun, slowly setting, cast his yellow beams over the 
 smooth waters. At the foot of the mountains lay a village 
 deeply sequestered in shade; and above, the Kuin of the 
 Drachenfels caught the richest beams of the sun. Yet thus 
 alone, though lofty, the ray cheered not the gloom that hung 
 over the giant rock : it stood on high, like some great name 
 on which the light of glory may shine, but which is associated 
 with a certain melancholy, from the solitude to which its very 
 height above the level of the herd condemned its owner! 
 1 Is not this prediction already fulfilled 1 — 1849. 
 
86 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE LEGEND OF ROLAND. THE ADVENTURES OF NTMPHALIN 
 
 ON THE ISLAND OF NONNEWERTH. HER SONG. THE DE- 
 CAY OF THE FAIEY-FAITH IN ENGLAND. 
 
 On the shore opposite the Drachenfels stand the Euins of 
 Rolandseck, — they are the shattered crown of a lofty and per- 
 pendicular mountain, consecrated to the memory of the brave 
 Eoland; below, the trees of an island to which the lady of 
 Eoland retired, rise thick and verdant from the smooth tide. 
 
 Nothing can exceed the eloquent and wild grandeur of the 
 whole scene. That spot is the pride and beauty of the 
 Ehine. 
 
 The legend that consecrates the tower and the island is 
 briefly told ; it belongs to a class so common to the Romaunts 
 of Germany. Roland goes to the wars. A false report of his 
 death reaches his betrothed. She retires to the convent in 
 the isle of Nonnewerth, and takes the irrevocable veil. Roland 
 returns home, flushed with glory and hope, to find that the 
 very fidelity of his affianced had placed an eternal barrier be- 
 tween them. He built the castle that bears his name, and 
 which overlooks the monastery, and dwelt there till his death, 
 — happy in the power at least to gaze, even to the last, upon 
 those walls which held the treasure he had lost. 
 
 The willows droop in mournful luxuriance along the island, 
 and harmonize with the memory that, through the desert of a 
 thousand years, love still keeps green and fresh. Nor hath 
 it permitted even those additions of fiction which, like mosses, 
 gather by time over the truth that they adorn, yet adorning 
 conceal, to mar the simple tenderness of the legend. 
 
 All was still in the island of Nonnewiirth; the lights shone 
 through the trees from the house that contained our travel- 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 87 
 
 lers. On one smooth spot where the islet shelves into the 
 Rhine met the wandering fairies. 
 
 "Oh, Pipalee! how beautiful!" cried Nymphalin, as she 
 stood enraptured by the wave, a star-beam shining on her, 
 with her yellow hair "dancing its ringlets in the whistling 
 wind." "For the first time since our departure I do not miss 
 the green fields of England." 
 
 "Hist!" said Pipalee, under her breath; "I hear fairy 
 steps, — they must be the steps of strangers." 
 
 "Let us retreat into this thicket of weeds," said Xymphalin, 
 somewhat alarmed; "the good lord-treasurer is already asleep 
 there." They whisked into what to them was a forest, for 
 the reeds were two feet high, and there sure enough they 
 found the lord-treasurer stretched beneath a bulrush, with his 
 pipe beside him, for since he had been in Germany he had 
 taken to smoking; and indeed wild thyme, properly dried, 
 makes very good tobacco for a fairy. They also found Nip 
 and Trip sitting very close together, Nip playing with her 
 hair, which was exceedingly beautiful. 
 
 "What do you do here?" said Pipalee, shortly; for she 
 was rather an old maid, and did not like fairies to be too close 
 to each other. 
 
 "'Watching my lord's slumber," said Nip, 
 
 "Pshaw! " said Pipalee. 
 
 "Nay," quoth Trip, blushing like a sea-shell; "there is no 
 harm in that, I 'm sure." 
 
 " Hush ! " said the queen, peeping through the reeds. 
 
 And now forth from the green bosom of the earth came a 
 tiny train; slowly, two by two, hand in hand, they swept 
 from a small aperture, shadowed with fragrant herbs, and 
 formed themselves into a ring : then came other fairies, laden 
 with dainties, and presently two beautiful white mushrooms 
 sprang up, on which the viands were placed, and lo, there 
 was a banquet! Oh, how merry they were! what gentle 
 peals of laughter, loud as a virgin's sigh! what jests! what 
 songs! Happy race! if mortals could see you as often as I 
 do, in the soft nights of summer, they would never be at a 
 loss for entertainment. But as our English fairies looked on, 
 
88 THE PILGRBIS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 they saw that these foreign elves were of a dilferent race from 
 themselves: they were taller. and less handsome, their hair 
 was darker, they wore mustaches, and had something of a 
 fiercer air. Poor Kymphalin was a little frightened; but pres- 
 ently soft music was heard floating along, something like the 
 sound we suddenly hear of a still night when a light breeze 
 steals through rushes, or wakes a ripple in some shallow 
 brook dancing over pebbles. And lo, from the aperture of the 
 earth came forth a fay, superbly dressed, and of a noble pres- 
 ence. The queen started back, Pipalee rubbed her eyes. Trip 
 looked over Pipalee's shoulder, and Kip, pinching her arm, 
 cried out amazed, "By the last new star, that is Prince von 
 Payzenheim ! " 
 
 Poor Nymphalin gazed again, and her little heart beat 
 under her bee's-wing bodice as if it would break. The prince 
 had a melancholy air, and he sat apart from the banquet, gaz- 
 ing abstractedly on the Rhine. 
 
 "Ah! " whispered Nymphalin to herself, "does he think 
 of me? " 
 
 Presently the prince drew forth a little flute hollowed from 
 a small reed, and began to play a mournful air. Nymphalin 
 listened with delight; it was one he had learned in her 
 dominions. 
 
 When the air was over, the prince rose, and approaching 
 the banqueters, despatched them on different errands; one to 
 visit the dwarf of the Drachenfels, another to look after the 
 grave of Musseus, and a whole detachment to puzzle the stu- 
 dents of Heidelberg. A few launched themselves upon willow 
 leaves on the Rhine to cruise about in the starlight, and an- 
 other band set out a hunting after the gray-legged moth. The 
 prince was left alone; and now Nymphalin, seeing the coast 
 clear, wrapped herself up in a cloak made out of a withered 
 leaf; and only letting her eyes glow out from the hood, she 
 glided from the reeds, and the prince turnng round, saw a 
 dark fairy figure by his side. He drew back, a little startled, 
 and placed his hand on his sword, when Nymphalin circling 
 round him, sang the following words : — 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 89 
 
 THE FAIRY'S REPROACH. 
 
 By the glow-worm's lamp in the dewy brake ; 
 
 By the gossamer's airy net ; 
 By tlie sliifting skin of the faithless snake, 
 Oh, teach me to forget : 
 
 For none, ah none • 
 Can teach so well that huniiui spell 
 As thou, false one ! 
 
 By the fairy dance on the greensward smooth ; 
 
 By the winds of the gentle west; 
 By the loving stars, when their soft looks soothe 
 The waves on their mother's breast. 
 Teach me thy lore ! 
 By which, like withered flowers, 
 The leaves of buried Hours 
 Blossom no more ! 
 
 By the tent in the violet's bell ; 
 
 By the may on the scented bough ; 
 By the lone green isle wliere my sisters dwell; 
 And thine own forgotten vow, 
 Teach me to live. 
 Nor feed on thoughts that pine 
 For love so false as thine ! 
 Teach me thy lore. 
 And one thou lov'st no more 
 
 Will bless thee and forgive ! 
 
 "Surely," said Fayzenlieim, faltering, "surely I know that 
 voice ! " 
 
 And Nymphalin's cloak dropped off her shoulder. "My 
 English fairy ! " and Fayzenheim knelt beside her. 
 
 I wish you had seen the fay kneel, for you would have 
 sworn it was so like a human lover that you would never have 
 sneered at love afterwards. Love is so fairy-like a part of us, 
 that even a fairy cannot make it differently from us, — that is 
 to say, when we love truly. 
 
90 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 There was great joy in the island that night among the 
 elves. They conducted Nymphalin to their palace within the 
 earth, and feasted her sumptuously; and Nip told their ad- 
 ventures with so much spirit that he enchanted the merry 
 foreigners. But Fayzenheim talked apart to Nymphalin, and 
 told her how he was lord of that island, and how he had been 
 obliged to return to his dominions by the law of his tribe, 
 which allowed him to be absent only a certain time in every 
 year. "But, my queen, I always intended to revisit thee next 
 sj)ring. " 
 
 "Thou need'st not have left us so abruptly," said Nympha- 
 lin, blushing. 
 
 " But do thou never leave me ! " said the ardent fairy ; " be 
 mine, and let our nuptials be celebrated on these shores. 
 Wouldst thou sigh for thy green island? No I for there the 
 fairy altars are deserted, the faith is gone from the land ; thou 
 art among the last of an unhonoured and expiring race. Thy 
 mortal poets are dumb, and Fancy, which was thy priestess, 
 sleeps hushed in her last repose. New and hard creeds have 
 succeeded to the fairy lore. Who steals through the starlit 
 boughs on the nights of June to watch the roundels of thy 
 tribe? The wheels of commerce, the din of trade, have si- 
 lenced to mortal ear the music of thy subjects' harps ! And 
 the noisy habitations of men, harsher than their dreaming 
 sires, are gathering round the dell and vale where thy co- 
 mates linger : a few years, and where will be the green soli- 
 tudes of England?" 
 
 The queen sighed, and the prince, perceiving that he was 
 listened to, continued, — 
 
 "Who, in thy native shores, among the children of men, 
 now claims the fairy's care? What cradle wouldst thou tend? 
 On what maid wouldst thou shower thy rosy gifts? What 
 barb wouldst thou haunt in his dreams? Poesy is fled the 
 island, why shouldst thou linger behind? Time hath brought 
 dull customs, that laugh at thy gentle being. Puck is buried 
 in the harebell, he hath left no offspring, and none mourn for 
 his loss; for night, which is the fairy season, is busy and 
 garish as the day. What hearth is desolate after the curfew? 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 91 
 
 What house bathed in stillness at the hour in which thy 
 revels commence? Thine empire among men hath passed 
 from thee, and thy race are vanishing from the crowded soil ; 
 for, despite our diviner nature, our existence is linked with 
 man's. Their neglect is our disease, their forgetfulness our 
 death. Leave then those dull, yet troubled scenes, that are 
 closing round the fairy rings of thy native isle. These moun- 
 tains, this herbage, these gliding waves, these mouldering 
 ruins, these starred rivulets, be they, beautiful fairy! thy 
 new domain. Yet in these lands our worship lingers; still 
 can we fill the thought of the young bard, and mingle with 
 his yearnings after the Beautiful, the Unseen. Hither come 
 the pilgrims of the world, anxious only to gather from these 
 scenes the legends of Us; ages will pass away ere the Ehine 
 shall be desecrated of our haunting presence. Come then, my 
 queen, let this palace be thine own, and the moon that glances 
 over the shattered towers of the Dragon Eock witness our 
 nuptials and our vows ! " 
 
 In such words the fairy prince courted the young queen, and 
 while she sighed at their truth she yielded to their charm. 
 Oh, still may there be one spot on the earth where the fairy 
 feet may press the legendary soil! still be there one land 
 where the faith of The Bright Invisible hallows and inspires! 
 Still glide thou, O majestic and solemn Rhine, among shades 
 and valleys, from which the wisdom of belief can call the 
 creations of the younger world! 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 WHEREIN THE READER IS MADE SPECTATOR WITH THE ENG- 
 LISH FAIRIES OF THE SCENES AND BEINGS THAT ARE BE- 
 NEATH THE EARTH. 
 
 During the heat of next day's noon, Payzenheim took the 
 English visitors through the cool caverns that wind amidst 
 the mountains of the Rhine. There, a thousand wonders 
 
92 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 awaited the eyes of the fairy queen, I speak not of the 
 Gothic arch and aisle into which the hollow earth forms it- 
 self, or the stream that rushes with a mighty voice through 
 the dark chasm, or the silver columns that shoot aloft, 
 worked by the gnomes from the mines of the mountains of 
 Taunus ; but of the strange inhabitants that from time to time 
 they came upon. They found in one solitary cell, lined with 
 dried moss, two misshapen elves, of a larger size than com- 
 mon, with a plebeian working-day aspect, who were chatting 
 noisily together, and making a pair of boots : these were the 
 Hausmannen or domestic elves, that dance into tradesmen's 
 houses of a night, and play all sorts of undignified tricks. 
 They were very civil to the queen, for they are good-natured 
 creatures on the whole, and once had many relations in Scot- 
 land. They then, following the course of a noisy rivulet, 
 came to a hole from which the sharp head of a fox peeped 
 out. The queen was frightened. "Oh, come on," said the 
 fox, encouragingly, " I am one of the fairy race, and many are 
 the gambols we of the brute -elves play in the German world 
 of romance." "Indeed, Mr. Fox," said the prince, "you only 
 speak the truth; and how is Mr. Bruin?" "Quite well, my 
 prince, but tired of his seclusion ; for indeed our race can do 
 little or nothing now in the world; and lie here in our old 
 age, telling stories of the past, and recalling the exploits we 
 did in our youth, — which, madam, you may see in all the 
 fairy histories in the prince's library." 
 
 " Your own love adventures, for instance. Master Fox, " said 
 the prince. 
 
 The fox snarled angrily, and drew in his head. 
 
 "You have displeased your friend," said Nymphalin. 
 
 "Yes; he likes no allusions to the amorous follies of his 
 youth. Did you ever hear of his rivalry with the dog for the 
 cat's good graces? " 
 
 "No; that must be very amusing." 
 
 " Well, my queen, when we rest by and by, I will relate to 
 you the history of the fox's wooing." 
 
 The next place they came to was a vast Runic cavern, cov- 
 ered with dark inscriptions of a forgotten tongue ; and sitting 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 93 
 
 on a huge stone they found a dwarf with long yellow hair, his 
 head leaning on his breast, and absorbed in meditation. 
 
 "This is a spirit of a wise and powerful race," whispered 
 Fayzeuheim, "that has often battled with the fairies; but he 
 is of the kindly tribe." 
 
 Then the dwarf lifted his head with a mournful air; and 
 gazed upon the bright shapes before him, lighted by the pine- 
 torches that the prince's attendants carried. 
 
 " And what dost thou muse upon, descendant of the race 
 of Laurin? " said the prince. 
 
 "Upon Time!" answered the dwarf, gloomily. "I see a 
 Eiver, and its waves are black, flowing from the clouds, and 
 none knoweth its source. It rolls deeply on, aye and ever- 
 more, through a green valley, which it slowly swallows up, 
 washing away tower and town, and vanquishing all things; 
 and the name of the River is Time." 
 
 Then the dwarf's head sank on his bosom, and he spoke 
 no more. 
 
 The fairies proceeded. " Above us, " said the prince, " rises 
 one of the loftiest mountains of the Rhine ; for mountains are 
 the Dwarf's home. When the Great Spirit of all made earth, 
 he saw that the hollows of the rocks and hills were tenantless, 
 and yet that a mighty kingdom and great palaces were hid 
 within them, — a dread and dark solitude, but lighted at times 
 from the starry eyes of many jewels ; and there was the treasure 
 of the human Vv^orld — gold and silver — and great heaps of 
 gems, and a soil of metals. So God made a race for this vast 
 empire, and gifted them with the power of thought, and the 
 soul of exceeding wisdom, so that they want not the merri- 
 ment and enterprise of the outer world; but musing in these 
 dark caves is their delight. Their existence rolls away in 
 the luxury of thought; only from time to time they appear in 
 the Avorld, and betoken woe or weal to men, — according to 
 their nature, for they are divided into two tribes, the benevo- 
 lent and the wrathful." While the prince spoke, they saw 
 glaring upon them from a ledge in the upper rock a grisly 
 face with a long matted beard. The prince gathered himself 
 up, and frowned at the evil dwarf, for such it was ; but with 
 
94 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 a wild laugh the face abruptly disappeared, and the echo of 
 the laugh rang with a ghastly sound through the long hollows 
 of the earth. 
 
 The queen clung to Fayzenheim's arm. "Fear not, my 
 queen," said he. "The evil race have no power over our 
 light and aerial nature; with men only they war; and he 
 whom we have seen was, in the old ages of the world, one of 
 the deadliest visitors to mankind." 
 
 But now they came winding by a passage to a beautiful 
 recess in the mountain empire ; it was of a circular shape of 
 amazing height; in the midst of it played a natural fountain 
 of sparkling waters, and around it were columns of massive 
 granite, rising in countless vistas, till lost in the distant 
 shade. Jewels were scattered round, and brightly played the 
 fairy torches on the gem, the fountain, and the pale silver, 
 that gleamed at frequent intervals from the rocks. " Here let 
 us rest," said the gallant fairy, clapping his hands; "what, 
 ho! music and the feast." 
 
 So the feast was spread by the fountain's side; and the 
 courtiers scattered rose-leaves, which they had brought with 
 them, for the prince and his visitor; and amidst the dark 
 kingdom of the dwarfs broke the delicate sound of fairy lutes. 
 "We have not these evil beings in England," said the queen, 
 as low as she could speak; "they rouse my fear, but my in- 
 terest also. Tell me, dear prince, of what nature was the in- 
 tercourse of the evil dwarf with man? " 
 
 "You know," answered the prince, "that to every species of 
 living thing there is something in common ; the vast chain of 
 sympathy runs through all creation. By that which they 
 have in common with the beast of the field or the bird of the 
 air, men govern the inferior tribes ; they appeal to the com- 
 mon passions of fear and emulation when they tame the wild 
 steed, to the common desire of greed and gain when they 
 snare the fishes of the stream, or allure the wolves to the pit- 
 fall by the bleating of the lamb. In their turn, in the older 
 ages of the world, it was by the passions which men had in 
 common with the demon race that the fiends commanded or 
 allured them. The dwarf whom you saw, being of that race 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 95 
 
 wliich is characterized by the ambition of power and the de- 
 sire of hoarding, appealed then in his intercourse with men 
 to the same characteristics in their own bosoms, — to ambition 
 or to avarice. And thus were his victims made! But, not 
 now, dearest Xymphalin," continued the prince, with a more 
 lively air, — "not now will we speak of those gloomy beings. 
 Ho, there! cease the music, and come hither all of ye, to 
 listen to a faithful and homely history of the Uog, the Cat, 
 the Griffin, and the Fox." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE WOOING OF MASTER FOX.^ 
 
 You are aware, my dear Nymphalin, that in the time of 
 which I am about to speak there was no particular enmity 
 between the various species of brutes; the dog and the hare 
 chatted very agreeably together, and all the world knows that 
 the wolf, unacquainted with mutton, had a particular affection 
 for the lamb. In these happy days, two most respectable 
 cats, of very old family, had an only daughter. Never was 
 kitten more amiable or more seducing; as she grew up she 
 manifested so many charms, that in a little while she became 
 noted as the greatest beauty in the neighbourhood. Need I 
 to you, dearest Nymphalin, describe her perfection? Suffice 
 it to say that her skin was of the most delicate tortoiseshell, 
 
 1 In the excursions of the fairies, it is the object of the author to bring 
 before the reader a rapid phantasmagoria of the various beings that belong 
 to the German superstitions, so that the work may thus describe the outer 
 and the inner world of the land of the Rhine. The tale of the Fox's Wooing 
 has been composed to give the English reader an idea of a species of novel 
 not naturalized amongst us, though frequent among the legends of our Irish 
 neighbours; in which the brutes are the only characters drawn, — drawn too 
 with shades of distinction as nice and subtle as if they were the creatures of 
 the civilized, world. 
 
96 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 that her paws were smoother than velvet, that her whiskers 
 were twelve inches long at the least, and that her eyes had a 
 gentleness altogether astonishing in a cat. But if the young 
 beauty had suitors in plenty during the lives of monsieur and 
 madame, you may suppose the number was not diminished 
 when, at the age of two years and a half, she was left an 
 orphan, and sole heiress to all the hereditary property. In 
 fine, she was the richest marriage in the whole country. 
 Without troubling you, dearest queen, with the adventures of 
 the rest of her lovers, with their suit and their rejection, I 
 come at once to the two rivals most sanguine of success, — the 
 dog and the fox. 
 
 Now the dog was a handsome, honest, straightforward, af- 
 fectionate fellow. "For my part," said he, "I don't wonder 
 at my cousin's refusing Bruin the bear, and Gauntgrim the 
 wolf: to be sure they give themselves great airs, and call 
 themselves ' noble,' hut what then? Bruin is always in the 
 sulks, and Gauntgrim always in a passion; a cat of any sen- 
 sibility would lead a miserable life with them. As for me, I 
 am very good-tempered when I 'm not put out, and I have no 
 fault except that of being angry if disturbed at my meals. I 
 am young and good-looking, fond of play and amusement, and 
 altogether as agreeable a husband as a cat could find in a sum- 
 mer's day. If she marries me, well and good; she may have 
 her property settled on herself: if not, I shall bear her no 
 malice; and I hope I sha'n't be too much in love to forget 
 that there are other cats in the world." 
 
 With that the dog threw his tail over his back, and set off 
 to his mistress with a gay face on the matter. 
 
 Now the fox heard the dog talking thus to himself, — 
 for the fox was always peeping about, in holes and corners, 
 and he burst out a laughing when the dog was out of 
 sight. 
 
 " Ho, ho, my fine fellow ! " said he ; " not so fast, if you 
 please: you've got the fox for -a rival, let me tell you." 
 
 The fox, as you very well know, is a beast that can never 
 do anything without a manoeuvre ; and as, from his cunning, 
 he was generally very lucky in anything he undertook, he did 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 97 
 
 not doubt for a moment that he should put the dog's nose out 
 of joint. Reynard was aware that in love one should always, 
 if possible, be the first in the field; and he therefore resolved 
 to get the start of the dog and arrive before him at the cat's 
 residence. But this was no easy matter; for though Reynard 
 could run faster than the dog for a little way, he was no 
 match for him in a journey of some distance. "However," 
 said Reynard, "those good-natured creatures are never very 
 wise; and I think I know already what will make him bait 
 on his way," 
 
 With that, the fox trotted pretty fast by a short cut in the 
 woods, and getting before the dog, laid himself down by a 
 hole in the earth, and began to howl most piteously. 
 
 The dog, hearing the noise, was very much alarmed. " See 
 now," said he, "if the poor fox has not got himself into some 
 scrape! Those cunning creatures are always in mischief; 
 thank Heaven, it never comes into my head to be cunning! " 
 And the good-natured animal ran off as hard as he could to 
 see what was the matter with the fox. 
 
 "Oh, dear!" cried Reynard; "what shall I do? What shall 
 I do? My poor little sister has fallen into this hole, and I 
 can't get her out; she'll certainly be smothered." And the 
 fox burst out a howling more piteously than before. 
 
 "But, my dear Reynard," quoth the dog, very simply, 
 "why don't you go in after your sister?" 
 
 "Ah, you may well ask that," said the fox; "but, in trying 
 to get in, don't you perceive that I have sprained my back 
 and can't stir? Oh, dear! what shall I do if my poor little 
 sister is smothered! " 
 
 "Pray don't vex yourself," said the dog; "I '11 get her out 
 in an instant." And with that he forced himself with great 
 difficulty into the hole. 
 
 Now, no sooner did the fox see that the dog was fairly in, 
 than he rolled a great stone to the mouth of the hole and 
 fitted it so tight, that the dog, not being able to turn round 
 and scratch against it with his forepaws, was made a close 
 prisoner. 
 
 "Ha, ha!" cried Reynard, laughing outside; "amuse your- 
 
 7 
 
98 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 self with my poor little sister, while I go and make your com- 
 pliments to Mademoiselle the Cat." 
 
 With that Eeynard set off at an easy pace, never troubling 
 his head what became of the poor dog. When he arrived in 
 the neighbourhood of the beautiful cat's mansion, he resolved 
 to pay a visit to a friend of his, an old magpie that lived in a 
 tree and was well acquainted with all the news of the place. 
 "For," thought Eeynard, "I may as well know the blind side 
 of my mistress that is to be, and get round it at once." 
 
 The magpie received the fox with great cordiality, and in- 
 quired what brought him so great a distance from home. 
 
 "Upon my word," said the fox, "nothing so much as the 
 pleasure of seeing your ladyship and hearing those agreeable 
 anecdotes you tell with so charming a grace; but to let you 
 into a secret — be sure it don't go further — " 
 
 "On the word of a magpie," interrupted the bird. 
 
 " Pardon me for doubting you, " continued the fox ; " I should 
 have recollected that a pie was a proverb for discretion. But, 
 as I was saying, you known her Majesty the lioness? " 
 
 "Surely," said the mapgie, bridling. 
 
 "Well; she was pleased to fall in — that is to say — to — 
 to — take a caprice to your humble servant, and the lion grew 
 so jealous that I thought it prudent to decamp. A jealous 
 lion is no joke, let me assure your ladyship. But mum 's the 
 word." 
 
 So great a piece of news delighted the magpie. She could 
 not but repay it in kind, by all the news in her budget. She 
 told the fox all the scandal about Bruin and Gauntgrim, and 
 she then fell to work on the poor young cat. She did not 
 spare her foibles, you may be quite sure. The fox listened 
 with great attention, and he learned enough to convince 
 him that however much the magpie might exaggerate, the 
 cat was very susceptible to flattery, and had a great deal of 
 imagination. 
 
 When the magpie had finished she said, "But it must be 
 very unfortunate for you to be banished from so magnificent a 
 court as that of the lion? " 
 
 " As to that, " answered the fox, " I console myself for my 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 99 
 
 exile with a present his Majesty made me on parting, as a re- 
 ward for my anxiety for his honour and domestic tranquillity; 
 namely, three hairs from the fifth leg of the amoronthologos- 
 phorus. Only think of that, ma'am! " 
 
 "The what?" cried the pie, cocking down her left ear. 
 
 "The amoronthologosphorus." 
 
 " La ! " said the magpie ; " and what is that very long word, 
 my dear Reynard? " 
 
 "The amoronthologosphorus is a beast that lives on the 
 other side of the river Cylinx; it has five legs, and on the 
 fifth leg there are three hairs, and whoever has those three 
 hairs can be young and beautiful forever." 
 
 "Bless me! I wish you would let me see them," said the 
 pie, holding out her claw. 
 
 "Would that I could oblige you, ma'am; but it's as much 
 as my life 's worth to show them to any but the lady I marry. 
 In fact, they only have an effect on the fair sex, as you may 
 see by myself, whose poor person they utterly fail to improve : 
 they are, therefore, intended for a marriage present, and his 
 Majesty the lion thus generously atoned to me for relinquish- 
 ing the tenderness of his queen. One must confess that there 
 was a great deal of delicacy in the gift. But you '11 be sure 
 not to mention it." 
 
 "A magpie gossip indeed! " quoth the old blab. 
 
 The fox then wished the magpie good night, and retired to 
 a hole to sleep off the fatigues of the day, before he presented 
 himself to the beautiful young cat. 
 
 The next morning. Heaven knows how! it was all over the 
 place that Eeynard the fox had been banished from court for 
 the favour shown him by her Majesty, and that the lion had 
 bribed his departure with three hairs that would make any 
 lady whom the fox married young and beautiful forever. 
 
 The cat was the first to learn the news, and she became all 
 curiosity to see so interesting a stranger, possessed of " quali- 
 fications " which, in the language of the day, " would render 
 any animal happy! " She was not long without obtaining her 
 wish. As she was taking a walk in the wood the fox con- 
 trived to encounter her. You may be sure that he made her 
 
100 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 his best bow; and lie flattered the poor cat with so courtly an 
 air that she saw nothing surprising in the love of the lioness. 
 
 Meanwhile let us see what became of his rival, the dog. 
 
 "Ah, the poor creature!" said Nymphalin; "it is easy to 
 guess that he need not be buried alive to lose all chance of 
 inarrying the heiress." 
 
 "Wait till the end," answered Fayzenheim. 
 
 When the dog found that he was thus entrapped, he gave 
 himself up for lost. In vain he kicked with his hind-legs 
 against the stone, — he only succeeded in bruising his paws; 
 and at length he was forced to lie down, with his tongue out 
 of his mouth, and quite exhausted. " However," said he, after 
 he had taken breath, " it won't do to be starved here, without 
 doing my best to escape; and if I can't get out one way, let me 
 see if there is not a hole at the other end." Thus saying, 
 his courage, which stood him in lieu of cunning, returned, and 
 he proceeded on in the same straightforward way in which 
 he always conducted himself. At first the path was exceed- 
 ingly narrow, and he hurt his sides very much against the 
 rough stones that projected from the earth ; but by degrees the 
 way became broader, and he now went on with considerable ease 
 to himself, till he arrived in a large cavern, where he saw an 
 immense griffin sitting on his tail, and smoking a huge pipe. 
 
 The dog was by no means pleased at meeting so suddenly a 
 creature that had only to open his mouth to swallow him up 
 at a morsel ; however, he put a bold face on the danger, and 
 walking respectfully up to the griffin, said, " Sir, I should be 
 very much obliged to you if you would inform me the way out 
 of these holes into the upper world." 
 
 The griffin took the pipe out of his mouth, and looked at the 
 dog very sternly. 
 
 "Ho, wretch!" said he, "how comest thou hither? I sup- 
 pose thou wantest to steal my treasure ; but I know how to 
 treat such vagabonds as you, and I shall certainly eat you 
 up." 
 
 "You can do that if you choose," said the dog; "but it 
 would be very unhandsome conduct in an animal so much 
 bigger than myself. For my own part, I never attack any 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 101 
 
 dog that is not of equal size, — I should be ashamed of myself 
 if I did. And as to your treasure, the character I bear for 
 honesty is too well known to merit such a suspicion." 
 
 "Upon my word," said the griffin, who could not help smil- 
 ing for the life of him, "you have a singularly free mode of 
 expressing yourself. And how, I say, came you hither? " 
 
 Then the dog, who did not know what a lie was, told the 
 griffin his whole history, — how he had set off to pay his court 
 to the cat, and how Keynard the fox had entrapped him into 
 the hole. 
 
 When he had finished, the griffin said to him, " I see, my 
 friend, that you know how to speak the truth; I am in want 
 of just such a servant as you will make me, therefore stay 
 with me and keep watch over my treasure when I sleep." 
 
 "Two words to that," said the dog. "You have hurt my 
 feelings very much by suspecting my honesty, and I would 
 much sooner go back into the wood and be avenged on that 
 scoundrel the fox, than serve a master who has so ill an opin- 
 ion of me. I pray you, therefore, to dismiss me, and to put 
 me in the right way to my cousin the cat." 
 
 " I am not a griffin of many words, " answered the master of 
 the cavern, "and I give you your choice, — be my servant or 
 be my breakfast ; it is just the same to me. I give you time 
 to decide till I have smoked out my pipe." 
 
 The poor dog did not take so long to consider. " It is true, " 
 thought he, " that it is a great misfortune to live in a cave 
 with a griffin of so unpleasant a countenance ; but, probably, 
 if I serve him well and faithfully, he '11 take pity on me some 
 day, and let me go back to earth, and prove to my cousin 
 what a rogue the fox is ; and as to the rest, though I would 
 sell my life as dear as I could, it is impossible to fight a 
 griffin with a mouth of so monstrous a size." In short, he de- 
 cided to stay with the griffin. 
 
 "Shake a paw on it," quoth the grim ^oker; and the dog 
 shook paws. 
 
 " And now, " said the griffin, " I will tell you what you are 
 to do. Look here," and moving his tail, he showed the dog 
 a great heap of gold and silver, in a hole in the ground, that 
 
102 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 he had covered with the folds of his tail; and also, what the 
 dog thought more valuable, a great heap of bones of very- 
 tempting appearance. "Now," said the griffin, "during the 
 day I can take very good care of these myself ; but at night 
 it is very necessary that I should go to sleep, so when I sleep 
 you must watch over them instead of me." 
 
 "Very well," said the dog. "As to the gold and silver, I 
 have no objection; but I would much rather that you would 
 lock up the bones, for I 'm often hungry of a night, and — " 
 
 "Hold your tongue," said the griffin. 
 
 " But, sir, " said the dog, after a short silence, " surely no- 
 body ever comes into so retired a situation! Who are the 
 thieves, if I may make bold to ask? " 
 
 " Know, " answered the griffin, " that there are a great many 
 serpents in this neighbourhood. They are always trying to 
 steal my treasure; and if they catch me napping, they, not 
 contented with theft, would do their best to sting me to death. 
 So that I am almost worn out for want of sleep." 
 
 "Ah," quoth the dog, who was fond of a good night's rest, 
 "I don't envy you your treasure, sir." 
 
 At night, the griffin, who had a great deal of penetration, 
 and saw that he might depend on the dog, lay down to sleep 
 in another corner of the cave ; and the dog, shaking himself 
 well, so as to be quite awake, took watch over the treasure. 
 His mouth watered exceedingly at the bones, and he could 
 not help smelling them now and then; but he said to himself, 
 "A bargain 's a bargain, and since I have promised to serve 
 the griffin, I must serve him as an honest dog ought to 
 serve." 
 
 In the middle of the night he saw a great snake creeping 
 in by the side of the cave ; but the dog set up so loud a bark 
 that the griffin awoke, and the snake crept away as fast as he 
 could. Then the griffin was very much pleased, and he gave 
 the dog one of the bones to amuse himself with; and every 
 night the dog watched the treasure, and acquitted himself so 
 well that not a snake, at last, dared to make its appearance, — 
 so the griffin enjoyed an excellent night's rest. 
 
 The dog now found himself much more comfortable than he 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 103 
 
 expected. The griffin regularly gave him one of the bones for 
 supper; and, pleased with his fidelity, made himself as agree- 
 able a master as a griffin could be. Still, however, the dog 
 was secretly very anxious to return to earth; for having noth- 
 ing to do during the day but to doze on the ground, he 
 dreamed perpetually of his cousin the cat's charms, and, in 
 fancy, he gave the rascal Keynard as hearty a worry as a fox 
 may well have the honour of receiving from a dog's paws. 
 He awoke panting; alas! he could not realize his dreams. 
 
 One night, as he was watching as usual over the treasure, 
 he was greatly surprised to see a beautiful little black and 
 white dog enter the cave; and it came fawning to our honest 
 friend, wagging its tail with pleasure. 
 
 "Ah, little one," said our dog, whom, to distinguish, I will 
 call the watch-dog, "you had better make the best of your 
 way back again. See, there is a great griffin asleep in the 
 other corner of the cave, and if he wakes, he will either eat 
 you up or make you his servant, as he has made me." 
 
 "I know what 3^ on would tell me," says the little dog; 
 "and I have come down here to deliver you. The stone is 
 now gone from the mouth of the cave, and you have nothing 
 to do but to go back with me. Come, brother, come." 
 
 The dog was very much excited by this address. "Don't 
 ask me, my dear little friend," said he; "you must be aware 
 that I should be too happy to escape out of this cold cave, 
 and roll on the soft turf once more : but if I leave my master, 
 the griffin, those cursed serpents, who are always on the 
 watch, will come in and steal his treasure, — nay, perhaps, 
 sting him to death." Then the little dog came up to the 
 watch-dog, and remonstrated with him greatly, and licked 
 him caressingly on both sides of his face; and, taking him 
 by the ear, endeavoured to draw him from the treasure : but 
 the dog would not stir a step, though his heart sorely pressed 
 hira. At length the little dog, finding it all in vain, said, 
 "Well, then, if I must leave, good-by; but I have become so 
 hungry in coming down all this way after you, that I wish 
 you would give me one of those bones ; they smell very pleas- 
 antly, and one out of so many could never be missed." 
 
104 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 " Alas ! " said the watch-dog, with tears in his eyes, " how 
 unlucky I am to have eaten up the bone my master gave me, 
 otherwise you should have had it and welcome. But I can't 
 give you one of these, because my master has made me prom- 
 ise to watch over them all, and I have given him my paw on 
 it. I am sure a dog of your respectable appearance will say 
 nothing further on the subject." 
 
 Then the little dog answered pettishly, "Pooh, what non- 
 sense you talk ! surely a great griffin can't miss a little bone 
 fit for me? " and nestling his nose under the watch-dog, he 
 tried forthwith to bring up one of the bones. 
 
 On this the watch-dog grew angry, and, though with much 
 reluctance, he seized the little dog by the nape of the neck 
 and threw him off, but without hurting him. Suddenly the 
 little dog changed into a monstrous serpent, bigger even than 
 the griffin himself, and the watch-dog barked with all his 
 might. The griffin rose in a great hurry, and the serpent 
 sprang upon him ere he was well awake. I wish, dearest 
 Nymphalin, you could have seen the battle between the griffin 
 and the serpent, — how they coiled and twisted, and bit and 
 darted their fiery tongues at each other. At length the ser- 
 pent got uppermost, and was about to plunge his tongue into 
 that part of the griffin which is unprotected by his scales, 
 when the dog, seizing him by the tail, bit him so sharply that 
 he could not help turning round to kill his new assailant, and 
 the griffin, taking advantage of the opportunity, caught the 
 serpent by the throat with both claws, and fairly strangled 
 him. As soon as the griffin had recovered from the nervous- 
 ness of the conflict, he heaped all manner of caresses on the 
 dog for saving his life. The dog told him the whole story, 
 and the griffin then explained that the dead snake was the 
 king of the serpents, who had the power to change himself 
 into any shape he pleased. "If he had tempted you," said 
 he, "to leave the treasure but for one moment, or to have 
 given him any part of it, ay, but a single bone, he would 
 have crushed you in an instant, and stung me to death ere I 
 could have waked; but none, no, not the most venomous thing 
 in creation, has power to hurt the honest ! " 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 105 
 
 "That has always been my belief," answered the dog; 
 "and now, sir, you had better go to sleep again and leave the 
 rest to me." 
 
 "Nay," answered the griffin, "I have no longer need of a 
 servant; for now that the king of the serpents is dead, the rest 
 will never molest me. It was only to satisfy his avarice that 
 his subjects dared to brave the den of the griffin." 
 
 Upon hearing this the dog was exceedingly delighted; and 
 raising himself on his hind paws, he begged the griffin most 
 movingly to let him return to earth, to visit his mistress the 
 cat, and worry his rival the fox. 
 
 "You do not serve an ungrateful master," answered the 
 griffin. " You shall return, and I will teach you all the craft 
 of our race, which is much craftier than the race of that pet- 
 tifogger the fox, so that you may be able to cope with your 
 rival." 
 
 "Ah, excuse me," said the dog, hastily, "I am equally 
 obliged to you; but I fancy honesty is a match for cunning 
 any day, and I think myself a great deal safer in being a dog 
 of honour than if I knew all the tricks in the world." 
 
 "Well," said the griffin, a little piqued at the dog's blunt- 
 ness, "do as you please; I wish you all possible success." 
 
 Then the griffin opened a secret door in the side of the 
 cabin, and the dog saw a broad path that led at once into the 
 wood. He thanked the griffin with all his heart, and ran 
 wagging his tail into the open moonlight. "Ah, ah, master 
 fox," said he, "there 's no trap for an honest dog that has not 
 two doors to it, cunning as you think yourself." 
 
 With that he curled his tail gallantly over his left leg, and 
 set off on a long trot to the cat's house. When he was within 
 sight of it, he stopped to refresh himself by a pool of water, 
 and who should be there but our friend the magpie. 
 
 "And what do you want, friend?" said she, rather dis- 
 dainfully, for the dog looked somewhat out of case after his 
 journey. 
 
 " I am going to see my cousin the cat, " answered he. 
 
 " Your cousin! marry come up," said the magpie; "don't 
 you know she is going to be married to Reynard the fox? 
 
106 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 This is not a time for her to receive the visits of a brute like 
 you." 
 
 These words put the dog in such a passion that he very 
 nearly bit the magpie for her uncivil mode of communicating 
 such bad news. However, he curbed his temper, and, with- 
 out answering her, went at once to the cat's residence. 
 
 The cat was sitting at the window, and no sooner did the 
 dog see her than he fairly lost his heart; never had he seen 
 so charming a cat before. He advanced, wagging his tail, 
 and with his most insinuating air, when the cat, getting up, 
 clapped the window in his face, and lo! Eeynard the fox ap- 
 peared in her stead. 
 
 " Come out, thou rascal ! " said the dog, showing his teeth ; 
 "come out, I challenge thee to single combat; I have not for- 
 given thy malice, and thou seest that I am no longer shut up 
 in the cave, and unable to punish thee for thy wickedness." 
 
 "Go home, silly one!" answered the fox, sneering; "thou 
 hast no business here, and as for fighting thee — bah ! " Then 
 the fox left the window and disappeared. But the dog, thor- 
 oughly enraged, scratched lustily at the door, and made such 
 a noise, that presently the cat herself came to the window. 
 
 "How now! " said she, angrily; "what means all this rude- 
 ness? Who are you, and what do you want at my house? " 
 
 "Oh, my dear cousin," said the dog, "do not speak so se- 
 verely. Know tliat I have come here on purpose to pay you 
 a visit ; and, whatever you do, let me beseech you not to lis- 
 ten to that villain Eeynard, — you have no conception what a 
 rogue he is ! " 
 
 "What!" said the cat, blushing; "do you dare to abuse 
 your betters in this fashion? I see you have a design on me. 
 Go, this instant, or — " 
 
 "Enough, madam," said the dog, proudly; "you need not 
 speak twice to me, — farewell." 
 
 And he turned away very slowly, and went under a tree, 
 where he took up his lodgings for the night. But the next 
 morning there was an amazing commotion in tlie neighbour- 
 hood; a stranger, of a very different style of travelling from 
 that of the dog, had arrived at the dead of the night, and 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 107 
 
 fixed his abode in a large cavern hollowed out of a steep rock. 
 The noise he had made in flying through the air was so great 
 that it had awakened every bird and beast in the parish; and 
 lleynard, whose bad conscience never suffered him to sleep 
 very soundly, putting his head out of the window, perceived, 
 to his great alarm, that the stranger was nothing less than a 
 monstrous griffin. 
 
 Now the griffins are the richest beasts in the world ; and 
 that 's the reason they keep so close under ground. When- 
 ever it does happen that they pay a visit above, it is not a 
 thing to be easily forgotten. 
 
 The magpie was all agitation. What could the griffin pos- 
 sibly want there? She resolved to take a peep at the cavern, 
 and accordingly she hopped timorously up the rock, and pre- 
 tended to be picking up sticks for her nest. 
 
 " Holla, ma'am ! " cried a very rough voice, and she saw the 
 griffin putting his head out of the cavern. "Holla! you are 
 the very lady I want to see; you know all the people about 
 here, eh? " 
 
 "All the best company, your lordship, I certainly do," an- 
 swered the magpie, dropping a courtesy. 
 
 Upon this the griffin walked out; and smoking his pipe 
 leisurely in the open air, in order to set the pie at her ease, 
 continued, — 
 
 " Are there any respectable beasts of good families settled 
 in this neighbourhood? " 
 
 "Oh, most elegant society, I assure your lordship," cried 
 the pie. " I have lived here myself these ten years, and the 
 great heiress, the cat yonder, attracts a vast number of 
 strangers." 
 
 "Humph! heiress, indeed! much you know about heir- 
 esses ! " said the griffin. " There is only one heiress in the 
 world, and that 's my daughter." 
 
 "Bless me! has your lordship a family? I beg you a thou- 
 sand pardons ; but I only saw your lordship's own equipage 
 last night, and did not know you brought any one with you." 
 
 "My daughter went first, and was safely lodged before I 
 arrived. She did not disturb you, I dare say, as I did; for 
 
108 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 she sails along like a swan : but I liave got the gout in my 
 left claw, and that 's the reason I puff and groan so in taking 
 a journey." 
 
 " Shall I drop in upon Miss Griffin, and see how she is after 
 her journey? " said the pie, advancing. 
 
 " I thank you, no. I don't intend her to be seen while I 
 stay here, — it unsettles her; and I'm afraid of the young 
 beasts running away with her if they once heard how hand- 
 some she was : she 's the living picture of me, but she 's mon- 
 strous giddy! Not that I should care much if she did go off 
 with a beast of degree, were I not obliged to pay her portion, 
 which is prodigious; and I don't like parting with money, 
 ma'am, when I 've once got it. Ho, ho, ho ! " 
 
 " You are too witty, my lord. But if you refused your con- 
 sent? " said the pie, anxious to know the whole family his- 
 tory of so grand a seigneur. 
 
 *' I should have to pay the dowry all the same. It was left 
 her by her uncle the dragon. But don't let this go any 
 further." 
 
 "Your lordship may depend on my secrecy. I wish your 
 lordship a very good morning." 
 
 Away flew the pie, and she did not stop till she got to the 
 cat's house. The cat and the fox were at breakfast, and 
 the fox had his paw on his heart. *' Beautiful scene ! " cried 
 the pie ; the cat coloured, and bade the pie take a seat. 
 
 Then off went the pie's tongue, glib, glib, glib, chatter, 
 chatter, chatter. She related to them the whole story of the 
 griffin and his daughter, and a great deal more besides, that 
 the griffin had never told her. 
 
 The cat listened attentively. Another young heiress in the 
 neighbourhood might be a formidable rival. "But is this 
 griffiness handsome? " said she. 
 
 " Handsome ! " cried the pie ; " oh, if you could have seen 
 the father ! — such a mouth, such eyes, such a complexion ; 
 and he declares she's the living picture of himself! But 
 what do you say, Mr. Reynard, — you, who have been so much 
 in the world, have, perhaps, seen the young lady? " 
 
 "Why, I can't say I have," answered the fox, waking from 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 109 
 
 a revery; "but she must be wonderfully rich. I dare say 
 that fool the dog will be making up to her." 
 
 "Ah, by the way," said the pie, "what a fuss he made at 
 your door yesterday; why would you not admit him, my 
 dear? " 
 
 "Oh," said the cat, demurely, "Mr. Eeynard says that he 
 is a dog of very bad character, quite a fortune-hunter; and 
 hiding the most dangerous disposition to bite under an ap- 
 pearance of good nature. I hope he won't be quarrelsome 
 with you, dear Reynard! " 
 
 "With me? Oh, the poor wretch, no! — he might bluster 
 a little; but he knows that if I 'm once angry I 'm a devil at 
 biting; — one should not boast of oneself." 
 
 In the evening Reynard felt a strange desire to go and see 
 the griffin smoking his pipe; but what could he do? There 
 was the dog under the opposite tree evidently watching for 
 him, and Reynard had no wish to prove himself that devil at 
 biting which he declared he was. At last he resolved to have 
 recourse to stratagem to get rid of the dog. 
 
 A young buck of a rabbit, a sort of provincial fop, had 
 looked in upon his cousin the cat, to pay her his respects, and 
 Reynard, taking him aside, said, "You see that shabby -look- 
 ing dog under the tree? He has behaved very ill to your 
 cousin the cat, and you certainly ought to challenge him. 
 Forgive my boldness, nothing but respect for your character 
 induces me to take so great a liberty; you know I would chas- 
 tise the rascal myself, but what a scandal it would make ! If 
 I were already married to your cousin, it would be a different 
 thing. But you know what a story that cursed magpie would 
 hatch out of it ! " 
 
 The rabbit looked very foolish ; he assured the fox he was 
 no match for the dog; that he was very fond of his cousin, to 
 be sure ! but he saw no necessity to interfere with her domes- 
 tic affairs ; and, in short, he tried all he possibly could to get 
 out of the scrape ; but the fox so artfully played on his vanity, 
 so earnestly assured him that the dog was the biggest coward 
 in the world and would make a humble apology, and so elo- 
 quently represented to him the glory he would obtain for 
 
110 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 manifesting so mucli spirit, that at length the rabbit was per- 
 suaded to go out and deliver the challenge. 
 
 "I '11 be your second," said the fox; "and the great field on 
 the other side the wood, two miles hence, shall be the place 
 of battle : there we shall be out of observation. You go first, 
 I '11 follow in half an hour; and I say, hark! — in case he does 
 accept the challenge, and you feel the least afraid, I '11 be in 
 the field, and take it off your paws with the utmost pleasure ; 
 rely on me, my dear sir! " 
 
 Away went the rabbit. The dog was a little astonished at 
 the temerity of the poor creature ; but on hearing that the fox 
 was to be present, willingly consented to repair to the place 
 of conflict. This readiness the rabbit did not at all relish; 
 he went very slowly to the field, and seeing no fox there, his 
 heart misgave him; and while the dog was putting his nose 
 to the ground to try if he could track the coming of the fox, 
 the rabbit slipped into a burrow, and left the dog to walk 
 back again. 
 
 Meanwhile the fox was already at the rock ; he walked very 
 soft-footedly, and looked about with extreme caution, for he 
 had a vague notion that a griffin-papa would not be very civil 
 to foxes. 
 
 Now there were two holes in the rock, — one below, one 
 above, an upper story and an under; and while the fox was 
 peering about, he saw a great claw from the upper rock beck- 
 oning to him. 
 
 " Ah, ah ! " said the fox, " that 's the wanton young griffin- 
 ess, I '11 swear." 
 
 He approached, and a voice said, — 
 
 "Charming Mr. Eeynard, do you not think you could de- 
 liver an unfortunate griffiness from a barbarous confinement 
 in this rock? " 
 
 *'0h, heavens!" cried the fox, tenderly, " what a beautiful 
 voice ! and, ah, my poor heart, what a lovely claw ! Is it pos- 
 sible that I hear the daughter of my lord, the great griffin? " 
 
 "Hush, flatterer! not so loud, if you please. My father is 
 taking an evening stroll, and is very quick of hearing. He 
 has tied me up by my poor wings in the cavern, for he is 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. Ill 
 
 mightily afraid of some beast running away with me. You 
 know I have all my fortune settled on myself." 
 
 "Talk not of fortune," said the fox; "but how can I deliver 
 you? Shall I enter and gnaw the cord? " 
 
 "Alas!" answered the griffiness, "it is an immense chain 
 I am bound with. However, you may come in and talk more 
 at your ease." 
 
 The fox peeped cautiously all round, and seeing no sign of 
 the griffin, he entered the lower cave and stole upstairs to the 
 upper story; but as he went on, he saw immense piles of 
 jewels and gold, and all sorts of treasure, so that the old 
 griffin might well have laughed at the poor cat being called 
 an heiress. The fox was greatly pleased at such indisputable 
 signs of wealth, and he entered the upper cave, resolved to be 
 transported with the charms of the griffiness. 
 
 There was, however, a great chasm between the landing- 
 place and the spot where the young lady was chained, and he 
 found it impossible to pass; the cavern was very dark, but he 
 saw enough of the figure of the griffiness to perceive, in spite 
 of her petticoat, that she was the image of her father, and the 
 most hideous heiress that the earth ever saw ! 
 
 However, he swallowed his disgust, and poured forth such 
 a heap of compliments that the griffiness appeared entirely 
 won. 
 
 He implored her to fly with him the first moment she was 
 unchained. 
 
 " That is impossible, " said she ; " for my father never un- 
 chains me except in his presence, and then I cannot stir out 
 of his sight." 
 
 "The wretch! " cried Reynard, "what is to be done? " 
 
 "Why, there is only one thing I know of," answered the 
 griffiness, "which is this: I always make his soup for him. 
 and if I could mix something in it that would put him fast 
 to sleep before he had time to chain me up again I might slip 
 down and carry off all the treasure below on my back." 
 
 "Charming!" exclaimed Reynard; "what invention! what 
 wit! I will go and get some poppies directly." 
 
 "Alas!" said the griffiness, "poppies have no effect upon 
 
112 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 griffins. The only thing that can ever put my father fast to 
 sleep is a nice young cat boiled up in his soup; it is astonish- 
 ing what a charm that has upon him! But where to get a 
 cat? — it must be a maiden cat too!" 
 
 Reynard was a little startled at so singular an opiate. 
 "But," thought he, "griffins are not like the rest of the 
 world, and so rich an heiress is not to be won by ordinary 
 means." 
 
 "I do know a cat, — a maiden cat," said he, after a short 
 pause; "but I feel a little repugnance at the thought of hav- 
 ing her boiled in the griffin's soup. Would not a dog do as 
 well? " 
 
 "Ah, base thing!" said the griffiness, appearing to weep; 
 "you are in love with the cat, I see it; go and marry her, 
 poor dwarf that she is, and leave me to die of grief." 
 
 In vain the fox protested that he did not care a straw for 
 the cat; nothing could now appease the griffiness but his posi- 
 tive assurance that come what would poor puss should be 
 brought to the cave and boiled for the griffin's soup. 
 
 "But how will you get her here?" said the griffiness. 
 
 " Ah, leave that to me, " said Reynard. " Only put a basket 
 out of the window and draw it up by a cord ; the moment it 
 arrives at the window, be sure to clap your claw on the cat at 
 once, for she is terribly active." 
 
 "Tush! " answered the heiress; "a pretty griffiness I should 
 be if I did not know how to catch a cat ! " 
 
 " But this must be when your father is out? " said Reynard. 
 
 "Certainly; he takes a stroll every evening at sunset." 
 
 "Let it be to-morrow, then," said Reynard, impatient for 
 the treasure. 
 
 This being arranged, Reynard thought it time to decamp. 
 He stole down the stairs again, and tried to filch some of the 
 treasure by the way; but it was too heavy for him to carry, 
 and he was forced to acknowledge to himself that it was im- 
 possible to get the treasure without taking the griffiness (whose 
 back seemed prodigiously strong) into the bargain. 
 
 He returned home to the cat, and when he entered her house, 
 and saw how ordinary everything looked after the jewels in 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 113 
 
 the griffin's cave, he quite wondered how he had ever thought 
 the cat had the least i)retensions to good looks. However, he 
 concealed his wicked design, and his mistress thought he had 
 never appeared so amiable. 
 
 "Only guess," said he, "where I have been! — to our new 
 neighbour the griffin; a most charming person, thoroughly 
 affable, and quite the air of the court. As for that silly mag- 
 pie, the griffin saw her character at once; and it was all a 
 hoax about his daughter, — he has no daughter at all. You 
 know, my dear, hoaxing is a fashionable amusement among 
 the great. He says he has heard of nothing but your beauty, 
 and on my telling him we were going to be married, he has 
 insisted upon giving a great ball and su^^per in honour of the 
 event. In fact, he is a gallant old fellow, and dying to see 
 you. Of course, I was obliged to accept the invitation." 
 
 "You could not do otherwise," said the unsuspecting young 
 creature, who, as I before said, was very susceptible to. 
 flattery. 
 
 "And only think how delicate his attentions are," said the 
 fox. "As he is very badly lodged for a beast of his rank, and 
 his treasure takes up the whole of the ground floor, he is. 
 forced to give the fete in the upper story, so he hangs out a 
 basket for his guests, and draws them up with his own claw.. 
 How condescending! But the great are so amiable!" 
 
 The cat, brought up in seclusion, was all delight at the idea, 
 of seeing such high life, and the lovers talked of nothing else 
 all the next day, — when Reynard, towards evening, putting- 
 his head out of the window, saw his old friend the dog lying 
 as usual and watching him very grimly. "Ah, that cursed 
 creature! I had quite forgotten him; what is to be done 
 now? He would make no bones of me if he once saw me 
 set foot out of doors." 
 
 With that, the fox began to cast in his head how he should 
 get rid of his rival, and at length he resolved on a very nota- 
 ble project; he desired the cat to set out first, and wait for 
 him at a turn in the road a little way off. "For," said he, 
 "if we go together we shall certainly be insulted b\- the dog; 
 and he will know that in the presence of a lady, the custom 
 
 8 
 
11-1 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 of a beast of my fashion will not suffer me to avenge the 
 affront. But when I am alone, the creature is such a coward 
 that he will not dare say his soul's his own; leave the door 
 open and I '11 follow immediately." 
 
 The cat's mind was so completely poisoned against her 
 cousin that she implicitly believed this account of his char- 
 acter; and accordingly, with many recommendations to her 
 lover not to sully his dignity by getting into any sort of quar- 
 rel with the dog, she set of£ first. 
 
 The dog went up to her very humbly, and begged her to 
 allow him to say a few words to her; but she received him so 
 haughtily, that his spirit was up ; and he walked back to the 
 tree more than ever enraged against his rival. But what was 
 his joy when he saw that the cat had left the door open! 
 "Now, wretch," thought he, "you cannot escape me! " So he 
 walked briskly in at the back door. He was greatly surprised 
 to find Eeynard lying down in the straw, panting as if his 
 heart would break, and rolling his eyes in the pangs of death. 
 
 "Ah, friend," said the fox, with a faltering voice, "you are 
 avenged, my hour is come; I am just going to give up the 
 ghost: put your paw upon mine, and say you forgive me." 
 
 Despite his anger, the generous dog could not set tooth on 
 a dying foe. 
 
 "You have served me a shabby trick," said he; "you have 
 left me to starve in a hole, and you have evidently maligned 
 me with my cousin: certainly I meant to be avenged on you; 
 but if you are really dying, that alters the affair." 
 
 " Oh, oh ! " groaned the fox, very bitterly ; " I am past help ; 
 the poor cat is gone for Doctor Ape, but he '11 never come in 
 time. What a thing it is to have a bad conscience on one's 
 death-bed! But wait till the cat returns, and I '11 do you full 
 justice with her before I die. " 
 
 The good-natured dog was much moved at seeing his mortal 
 enemy in such a state, and endeavoured as well as he could to 
 console him. 
 
 " Oh, oh ! " said the fox ; " I am so parched in the throat, I 
 am burning; " and he hung his tongue out of his mouth, and 
 rolled his eyes more fearfully than ever. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 115 
 
 "Is there no water here? " said the dog, looking round. 
 
 " Alas, no ! — yet stay ! yes, now I think of it, there is some 
 in that little hole in the wall ; but how to get at it ! It is so 
 high that I can't, in my poor weak state, climb up to it; and 
 I dare not ask such a favour of one I have injured so much." 
 
 "Don't talk of it," said the dog: "but the hole's very 
 small, I could not put my nose through it." 
 
 "No; but if you just climb up on that stone, and thrust 
 your paw into the hole, you can dip it into the water, and so 
 cool my poor parched mouth. Oh, what a thing it is to have 
 a bad conscience ! " 
 
 The dog sprang upon the stone, and, getting on his hind 
 legs, thrust his front paw into the hole; when suddenly Eey- 
 nard pulled a string that he had concealed under the straw, 
 and the dog found his paw caught tight to the wall in a run- 
 ning noose. 
 
 " Ah, rascal ! " said he, turning round ; but the fox leaped 
 up gayly from the straw, and fastening the string with his 
 teeth to a nail in the other end of the wall, walked out, cry- 
 ing, "Good-by, my dear friend; have a care how you believe 
 hereafter in sudden conversions ! " So he left the dog on his 
 hind legs to take care of the house. 
 
 Reynard found the cat waiting for him where he had ap- 
 pointed, and they walked lovingly together till they came to 
 the cave. It was now dark, and they saw the basket waiting 
 below; the fox assisted the poor cat into it. "There is only 
 room for one, " said he, " you must go first ! " Up rose the 
 basket; the fox heard a piteous mew, and no more. 
 
 "So much for the griffin's soup! " thought he. 
 
 He waited patiently for some time, when the griffiness, 
 waving her claw from the window, said cheerfully, " All 's 
 right, my dear Reynard; my papa has finished his soup, and 
 sleeps as sound as a rock! All the noise in the world would 
 not wake him now, till he has slept off the boiled cat, which 
 won't be these twelve hours. Come and assist me in packing 
 up the treasure ; I should be sorry to leave a single diamond 
 behind." 
 
 "So should I," quoth the fox. "Stay, I '11 come round by 
 
116 THE PILGRIMS OF THE EHINE. 
 
 the lower hole: why, the door 's shut! pray, beautiful griffin- 
 ess, open it to thy impatient adorer. " 
 
 "Alas, my father has hid the key! I never know where he 
 places it. You must come up by the basket; see, I will 
 lower it for you." 
 
 The fox was a little loth to trust himself in the same con- 
 veyance that had taken his mistress to be boiled; but the most 
 cautious grow rash when money 's to be gained, and avarice 
 can trap even a fox. So he put himself as comfortably as he 
 could into the basket, and up he went in an instant. It 
 rested, however, just before it reached the window, and the 
 fox felt, with a slight shudder, the claw of the griffiness 
 stroking his back. 
 
 "Oh, what a beautiful coat! " quoth she, caressingly. 
 "You are too kind," said the fox; "but you can feel it 
 more at your leisure when I am once up. Make haste, I be- 
 seech you." 
 
 "Oh, what a beautiful bushy tail! Never did I feel such 
 a tail." 
 
 "It is entirely at your service, sweet griffiness," said the 
 fox; "but pray let me in. Why lose an instant?" 
 
 "No, never did I feel such a tail! No wonder you are so 
 successful with the ladies." 
 
 "Ah, beloved griffiness, my tail is yours to eternity, but you 
 pinch it a little too hard." 
 
 Scarcely had he said this, when down dropped the basket, 
 but not with the fox in it; he found himself caught by the 
 tail, and dangling half way down the rock, by the help of the 
 very same sort of pulley wherewith he had snared the dog. 
 I leave you to guess his consternation; he yelped out as loud 
 as he could, — for it hurts a fox exceedingly to be hanged by 
 his tail with his head downwards, — when the door of the rock 
 opened, and out stalked the griffin himself, smoking his 
 pipe, with a vast crowd of all the fashionable beasts in the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 "Oho, brother," said the bear, laughing fit to kill himself; 
 "who ever saw a fox hanged by the tail before? " 
 
 "You '11 have need of a physician," quoth Doctor Ape. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 117 
 
 "A pretty matcli, indeed; a griffiness for such a creature as 
 you ! " said the goat, strutting b}^ him. 
 
 The fox grinned with pain, and said nothing. But that 
 which hurt him most was the compassion of a dull fool of a 
 donkey, who assured him with great gravity that he saw 
 nothing at all to laugh at in his situation! 
 
 "At all events," said the fox, at last, "cheated, gulled, be- 
 trayed as I am, I have played the same trick to the dog. Go 
 and laugh at him, gentlemen ; he deserves it as much as I can, 
 I assure you." 
 
 "Pardon me," said the griffin, taking the pipe out of his 
 mouth; "one never laughs at the honest." 
 
 "And see," said the bear, "here he is." 
 
 And indeed the dog had, after much effort, gnawed the 
 string in two, and extricated his paw; the scent of the fox 
 had enabled him to track his footsteps, and here he arrived, 
 burning for vengeance and finding himself already avenged. 
 
 But his first thought was for his dear cousin. "Ah, where 
 is she?" he cried movingly; "without doubt that villain 
 Keynard has served her some scurvy trick." 
 
 "I fear so indeed, my old friend," answered the griffin; 
 "but don't grieve, — after all, she was nothing particular. 
 You shall marry my daughter the griffiness, and succeed to all 
 the treasure ; ay, and all the bones that you once guarded so 
 faithfully." 
 
 "Talk not to me," said the faithful dog. "I want none of 
 your treasure; and, though I don't mean to be rude, your 
 griffiness may go to the devil. I will run over the world, 
 but I will find my dear cousin." 
 
 "See her then," said the griffin; and the beautiful cat, more 
 beautiful than ever, rushed out of the cavern, and threw her- 
 self into the dog's paws. 
 
 A pleasant scene this for the fox! He had skill enough in 
 the female heart to know that it may excuse many little infi- 
 delities, but to be boiled alive for a griffin's soup — no, the 
 offence was inexpiable. 
 
 "You understand me, Mr. Reynard," said the griffin, "I 
 have no daughter, and it was me you made love to. Know- 
 
118 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 ing wliat sort of a creatare a magpie is, I amused myself 
 with hoaxing her, — the fashionable amusement at court, you 
 know. " 
 
 The fox made a mighty struggle, and leaped on the ground, 
 leaving his tail behind him. It did not grow again in a hurry. 
 
 " See, " said the griffin, as the beasts all laughed at the fig- 
 ure Keynard made running into the wood, *' the dog beats the 
 fox with the ladies, after all ; and cunning as he is in every- 
 thing else, the fox is the last creature that should ever think 
 of making love ! " 
 
 " Charming ! " cried Nymphalin, clasping her hands ; " it is 
 just the sort of story I like." 
 
 "And I suppose, sir," said Nip, pertly, "that the dog and 
 the cat lived very happily ever afterwards? Indeed the nup- 
 tial felicity of a dog and cat is proverbial ! " 
 
 " I dare say they lived much the same as any other mar- 
 ried couple," answered the prince. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 THE TOMB OF A FATHER OF MANY CHILDREN. 
 
 The feast being now ended, as well as the story, the fairies 
 wound their way homeward by a different path, till at length 
 a red steady light glowed through the long basaltic arches 
 upon them, like the Demon Hunters' fires in the Forest of 
 Pines. 
 
 The prince sobered in his pace. "You approach," said he, 
 in a grave tone, " the greatest of our temples ; you will wit- 
 ness the tomb of a mighty founder of our race ! " An awe 
 crept over the queen, in spite of herself. Tracking the fires 
 in silence, they came to a vast space, in the midst of which 
 was a long gray block of stone, such as the traveller finds 
 amidst the dread silence of Egyptian Thebes. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 119 
 
 And on this stone lay the gigantic figure of a man, — dead, 
 but not death-like, for invisible spells had preserved the flesh 
 and the long hair for untold ages ; and beside him lay a rude 
 instrument of music, and at his feet was a sword and a hun- 
 ter's spear; and above, the rock wound, hollowed and roofless, 
 to the upper air, and daylight came through, sickened and 
 pale, beneath red flres that burned everlastingly around him, 
 on such simple altars as belong to a savage race. But the 
 place was not solitary, for many motionless but not lifeless 
 shapes sat on large blocks of stone beside the tomb. There 
 was the wizard, wrapped in his long black mantle, and his 
 face covered with his hands; there was the uncouth and de- 
 formed dwarf, gibbering to himself; there sat the household 
 elf; there glowered from a gloomy rent in the wall, with glit- 
 tering eyes and shining scale, the enormous dragon of the 
 North. An aged crone in rags, leaning on a staff, and gazing 
 malignantly on the visitors, with bleared but fiery eyes, stood 
 opposite the tomb of the gigantic dead. And now the fairies 
 themselves completed the group ! But all was dumb and un- 
 utterably silent, — the silence that floats over some antique 
 city of the desert, when, for the first time for a hundred cen- 
 turies, a living foot enters its desolate remains; the silence 
 that belongs to the dust of eld, — deep, solemn, palpable, and 
 sinking into the heart with a leaden and death-like weight. 
 Even the English fairy spoke not; she held her breath, and 
 gazing on the tomb, she saw, in rude vast characters, — 
 
 THE TEUTON. 
 
 " We are all that remain of his religion ! " said the prince, 
 as they turned from the dread temple. 
 
120 THE PILGRIMS OF THE EHINE. 
 
 CHAPTEK XIV. 
 
 THE FAIKY's cave, AKD THE FAIRy's WISH. 
 
 It was evening; and the fairies were dancing beneath the 
 twilight star. 
 
 "And why art thou sad, my violet?" said the prince; "for 
 thine eyes seek the ground ! " 
 
 "Now that I have found thee," answered the queen, "and 
 now that I feel what happy love is to a fairy, I sigh over that 
 love which I have lately witnessed among mortals, but the 
 bud of whose happiness already conceals the worm. For well 
 didst thou say, my prince, that we are linked with a m3-steri- 
 Gus affinity to mankind, and whatever is pure and gentle 
 amongst them speaks at once to our sympathy, and com- 
 mands our vigils." 
 
 "And most of all," said the German fairy, "are they who 
 love under our watch ; for love is the golden chain that binds 
 all in the universe : love lights up alike the star and the glow- 
 worm; and wherever there is love in men's lot, lies the secret 
 affinity with men, and with things divine." 
 
 "But with the human race," said Nymi^halin, "there is no 
 love that outlasts the hour, for either death ends, or custom 
 alters. When the blossom comes to fruit, it is plucked and 
 seen no more; and therefore, when I behold true love sen- 
 tenced to an early grave, I comfort myself that I shall not at 
 least behold the beauty dimmed, and the softness of the heart 
 hardened into stone. Yet, my prince, while still the pulse 
 can beat, and the warm blood flow, in that beautiful form 
 which I have watched over of late, let me not desert her; still 
 let my influence keep the sky fair, and the breezes pure ; still 
 let me drive the vapour from the moon, and the clouds from 
 the faces of the stars ; still let me fill her dreams with tender 
 and brilliant images, and glass in the mirror of sleep the 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 121 
 
 happiest visions of fairy -land; still let me pour over her eyes 
 that magic, which suffers them to see no fault in one in whom 
 she has garnered up her soul! And as death comes slowly on, 
 still let me rob the spectre of its terror, and the grave of its 
 sting; so that, all gently and unconscious to herself, life may 
 glide into the Great Ocean where the shadows lie, and the 
 spirit without guile may be severed from its mansion without 
 pain! " 
 
 The wish of the fairy was fulfilled. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE BANKS OP THE RHINE. — FKOM THE DRACHENFELS TO 
 
 BROHL. AN INCIDENT THAT SUFFICES IN THIS TALE FOR 
 
 AN EPOCH. 
 
 From the Drachenfels commences the true glory of the 
 Rhine; and once more Gertrude's eyes conquered the languor 
 that crept gradually over them as she gazed on the banks 
 around. 
 
 Fair blew the breeze, and freshly curled the waters; and 
 Gertrude did not feel the vulture that had fixed its talons 
 within her breast. The Rhine widens, like a broad lake, be- 
 tween the Drachenfels and Unkel; villages are scattered over 
 the extended plain on the left; on the right is the Isle of 
 Werth and the houses of Oberwinter; the hills are covered 
 with vines; and still Gertrude turned back with a lingering 
 gaze to the lofty crest of the Seven Hills. 
 
 On, on — and the spires of Unkel rose above a curve in the 
 banks, and on the opposite shore stretched those wondrous 
 basaltic columns which extend to the middle of the river, and 
 when the Rhine runs low, you may see them like an engulfed 
 city beneath the waves. You then view the ruins of Okken- 
 fels, and hear the voice of the pastoral Gasbach pouring its 
 waters into the Rhine. From amidst the clefts of the rocks 
 
122 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 the vine peeps luxuriantly forth, and gives a richness and 
 colouring to what ISTature, left to herself, intended for the 
 stern. 
 
 "But turn your eye backward to the right," said Trevj-lyan; 
 " those banks were formerly the special haunt of the bold rob- 
 bers of the Khine, and from amidst the entangled brakes that 
 then covered the ragged cliffs they rushed upon their prey. 
 In the gloomy canvas of those feudal days what vigorous and 
 mighty images were crowded! A robber's life amidst these 
 mountains, and beside this mountain stream, must have been 
 the very poetry of the spot carried into action." 
 
 They rested at Brohl, a small town between two mountains. 
 On the summit of one you see the gray remains of Rheinech. 
 There is something weird and preternatural about the aspect 
 of this place ; its soil betrays signs that in the former ages 
 (from which even tradition is fast fading away) some volcano 
 here exhausted its fires. The stratum of the earth is black and 
 jiitchy, and the springs beneath it are of a dark and graveo- 
 lent water. Here the stream of the Brohlbach falls into the 
 Rhine, and in a valley rich with oak and pine, and full of 
 caverns, which are not without their traditionary inmates, 
 stands the castle of Schweppenbourg, which our party failed 
 not to visit. 
 
 Gertrude felt fatigued on their return, and Trevylyan sat 
 by her in the little inn, while Vane went forth, with the cu- 
 riosity of science, to examine the strata of the soil. 
 
 They conversed in the frankness of their plighted troth 
 upon those topics which are only for lovers : upon the bright 
 chapter in the history of their love; their first meeting; their 
 first impressions; the little incidents in their present jour- 
 ney, — incidents noticed by themselves alone; that life tcithin 
 life which two persons know together, — which one knows not 
 without the other, which ceases to both the instant they are 
 divided. 
 
 "I know not what the love of others may be," said Ger- 
 trude, "but ours seems different from all of which I have read. 
 Books tell us of jealousies and misconstructions, and the ne- 
 cessity of an absence, the sweetness of a quarrel; but we, 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 123 
 
 dearest Albert, have had no experience of these passages in 
 love. We have never misunderstood each other; ive have no 
 reconciliation to look back to. When was there ever occasion 
 for me to ask forgiveness from you? Our love is made up 
 only of one memory, — unceasing kindness! A harsh word, 
 a wronging thought, never broke in upon the happiness we 
 have felt and feel." 
 
 "Dearest Gertrude," said Trevylyan, "that character of our 
 love is caught from you; you, the soft, the gentle, have been 
 its pervading genius; and the well has been smooth and pure, 
 for you were the spirit that lived within its depths." 
 
 And to such talk succeeded silence still more sweet, — the 
 silence of the hushed and overflowing heart. The last voices 
 of the birds, the sun slowly sinking in the west, the fragrance 
 of descending dews, filled them with that deep and mysterious 
 sympathy which exists between Love and Nature. 
 
 It was after such a silence — a long silence, that seemed 
 but as a moment — that Trevylyan spoke, but Gertrude an- 
 swered not; and, yearning once more for her sweet voice, he 
 turned and saw that she had fainted away. 
 
 This was the first indication of the point to which her in- 
 creasing debility had arrived. Trevylyan's heart stood still, 
 and then beat violently; a thousand fears crept over him; he 
 clasped her in his arms, and bore her to the open window. 
 The setting sun fell upon her countenance, from which the 
 play of the young heart and warm fancy had fled, and in its 
 deep and still repose the ravages of disease were darkly visi- 
 ble. What were then his emotions! His heart was like 
 stone; but he felt a rush as of a torrent to his temples: his 
 eyes grew dizzy, — he was stunned by the greatness of his 
 despair. For the last week he had taken hope for his com- 
 panion; Gertrude had seemed so much stronger, for her hap- 
 piness had given her a false support. And though there had 
 been moments when, watching the bright hectic come and go, 
 and her step linger, and the breath heave short, he had felt 
 the hope suddenly cease, yet never had he known till now 
 that fulness of anguish, that dread certainty of the worst, 
 which the calm, fair face before him struck into his soul; and 
 
124 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 mixed with this agony as he gazed was all the passion of the 
 most ardent love. For there she lay in his arms, the gentle 
 breath rising from lips where the rose yet lingered, and the 
 long, rich hair, soft and silken as an infant's, stealing from 
 its confinement: everything that belonged to Gertrude's beauty 
 was so inexpressibly soft and pure and youthful! Scarcely 
 seventeen, she seemed much younger than she was ; her figure 
 had sunken from its roundness, but still how light, how lovely 
 were its wrecks ! the neck whiter than snow, the fair small 
 hand! Her weight was scarcely felt in the arms of her lover; 
 and he — what a contrast ! — was in all the pride and flower 
 of glorious manhood ! His was the lofty brow, the wreathing 
 hair, the haughty eye, the elastic form; and upon this frail, 
 perishable thing had he fixed all his heart, all the hopes of 
 his youth, the pride of his manhood, his schemes, his ener- 
 gies, his ambition! 
 
 " Oh, Gertrude ! '' cried he, " is it — is it thus — is there in- 
 deed no hope? " 
 
 And Gertrude now slowly recovering, and opening her eyes 
 upon Trevylyan's face, the revulsion was so great, his emo- 
 tions so overpowering, that, clasping her to his bosom, as if 
 even death should not tear her away from him, he wept over 
 her in an agony of tears; not those tears that relieve the 
 heart, but the fiery rain of the internal storm, a sign of the 
 fierce tumult that shook the very core of his existence, not a 
 relief. 
 
 Awakened to herself, Gertrude, in amazement and alarm, 
 threw her arms around his neck, and, looking wistfully into 
 his face, implored him to speak to her, 
 
 "Was it my illness, love? " said she; and the music of her 
 voice only conveyed to him the thought of how soon it would 
 be dumb to him forever. "Nay," she continued winningly, 
 "it was but the heat of the day; I am better now, — I am 
 well ; there is no cause to be alarmed for me : " and with all 
 the innocent fondness of extreme youth, she kissed the burn- 
 ing tears from his eyes. 
 
 There was a playfulness, an innocence in this poor girl, so 
 unconscious as yet of her destiny, which rendered her fate 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 125 
 
 doubly toucliing, and which to the stern Trevylyan, hack- 
 neyed by the worki, made her irresistible charm ; and now as 
 she put aside her hair, and looked up gratefully, yet plead- 
 ingly, into his face, he could scarce refrain from pouring out 
 to her the confession of his anguish and despair. But the 
 necessity of self-control, the necessity of concealing from her 
 a knowledge which might only, by impressing her imagina- 
 tion, expedite her doom, while it would embitter to her mind 
 the unconscious enjoyment of the hour, nerved and manned 
 him. He checked by those violent efforts which only men 
 can make, the evidence of his emotions ; and endeavoured, by 
 a rapid torrent of words, to divert her attention from a weak- 
 ness, the causes of which he could not explain. Fortunately 
 Vane soon returned, and Trevylyan, consigning Gertrude to 
 his care, hastily left the room. 
 
 Gertrude sank into a revery. 
 
 " Ah, dear father ! " said she, suddenly, and after a pause, 
 " if I indeed were worse than I have thought myself of late, 
 if I were to die now, what would Trevylyan feel ? Pray God 
 I may live for his sake ! " 
 
 "My child, do not talk thus; you are better, much better 
 than you were. Ere the autumn ends, Trevylyan's happiness 
 will be your lawful care. Do not think so despondently of 
 yourself." 
 
 "I thought not of myself," sighed Gertrude, "but of 
 him ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 GERTRrCE. — THE EXCURSION" TO HAMMERSTEIN. — THOUGHTS. 
 
 The next day they visited the environs of Brohl. Ger- 
 trude was unusually silent; for her temper, naturally sunny 
 and enthusiastic, was accustomed to light up everything she 
 saw. Ah, once how bounding was that step ! how undulating 
 
126 THE PILGRBIS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 the young graces of that form ! liow playfully once danced the 
 ringlets on that laughing cheek! But she clung to Trevylyan's 
 proud form with a yet more endearing tenderness than was 
 her wont, and hung yet more eagerly on his words; her hand 
 sought his, and she often pressed it to her lips, and sighed as 
 she did so. Something that she would not tell seemed pass- 
 ing within her, and sobered her playful mood. But there was 
 this noticeable in Gertrude: whatever took away from her 
 gayety increased her tenderness. The infirmities of her frame 
 never touched her temper. She was kind, gentle, loving to 
 the last. 
 
 They had crossed to the opposite banks, to visit the Castle 
 of Hammerstein. The evening was transparently serene and 
 clear ; and the warmth of the sun yet lingered upon the air, 
 even though the twilight had passed and the moon risen, as 
 their boat returned by a lengthened passage to the village. 
 Broad and straight flows the Khine in this part of its career. 
 On one side lay the wooded village of Namedy, the hamlet of 
 Fornech, backed by the blue rock of Kruezborner Ley, the 
 mountains that shield the mysterious Brohl; and on the op- 
 posite shore they saw the mighty rock of Hammerstein, with 
 the green and livid ruins sleeping in the melancholy moon- 
 light. Two towers rose haughtily above the more disman- 
 tled wrecks. How changed since the alternate banners of the 
 Spaniard and the Swede waved from their ramparts, in that 
 great war in which the gorgeous Wallenstein won his laurels ! 
 And in its mighty calm flowed on the ancestral Rhine, the 
 vessel reflected on its smooth expanse; and above, girded by 
 thin and shadowy clouds, the moon cast her shadows upon 
 rocks covered with verdure, and brought into a dim light the 
 twin spires of Andernach, tranquil in the distance. 
 
 "How beautiful is this hour!" said Gertrude, with a low 
 voice, "surely we do not live enough in the night; one half 
 the beauty of the world is slept away. "What in the day can 
 equal the holy calm, the loveliness, and the stillness which 
 the moon now casts over the earth? These," she continued, 
 pressing Trevylyan's hand, "are hours to remember; and you 
 — will you ever forget them?" 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 127 
 
 Something there is in recollections of such times and scenes 
 that seem not to belong to real life, but are rather an episode 
 in its history; they are like some wandering into a more ideal 
 ■world ; they refuse to blend with our ruder associations ; they 
 live in us, apart and alone, to be treasured ever, but not 
 lightly to be recalled. There are none living to whom we 
 can confide them, — who can sympathize with what then Ave 
 felt? It is this that makes poetry, and that page which we 
 create as a confidant to ourselves, necessary to the thoughts 
 that weigh upon the breast. We write, for our writing is our 
 friend, the inanimate paper is our confessional; we pour forth 
 on it the thoughts that we could tell to no private ear, and are 
 relieved, are consoled. And if genius has one prerogative 
 dearer than the rest, it is that which enables it to do honour 
 to the dead, — to revive the beauty, the virtue that are no 
 more; to wreathe chaplets that outlive the day around the 
 urn which were else forgotten by the world! 
 
 When the poet mourns, in his immortal verse, for the dead, 
 tell me not that fame is in his mind! It is filled by thoughts, 
 by emotions that shut out the living. He is breathing to his 
 genius — to that sole and constant friend Avhieh has grown up 
 with him from his cradle — the sorrows too delicate for human 
 sympathy ! and when afterwards he consigns the confession to 
 the crowd, it is indeed from the hope of honour, — honour not 
 for himself, but for the being that is no more. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 LETTER EROM TREVYLYAN TO . 
 
 CoBLENTZ. 
 
 I AM obliged to you, my dear friend, for your letter; which, 
 indeed, I have not, in the course of our rapid journey, had 
 the leisure, perhaps the heart, to answer before. But we are 
 staying in this town for some days, and I write now in the 
 
128 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 early morning, ere any one else in our hotel is awake. Do 
 not tell me of adventure, of politics, of intrigues ; my nature 
 is altered. I threw down your letter, animated and brilliant 
 as it was, with a sick and revolted heart. But I am now in 
 somewhat less dejected spirits. Gertrude is better, — yes, 
 really better; there is a physician here who gives me hope; 
 my care is perpetually to amuse, and never to fatigue her, — 
 never to permit her thoughts to rest upon herself, For I have 
 imagined that illness cannot, at least in the unexhausted 
 vigour of our years, fasten upon us irremediably unless we 
 feed it with our own belief in its existence. You see men of 
 the most delicate frames engaged in active and professional 
 pursuits, who literally have no time for illness. Let them 
 become idle, let them take care of themselves, let them think 
 of their health — and they die ! The rust rots the steel which 
 use preserves; and, thank Heaven, although Gertrude, once 
 during our voyage, seemed roused, by an inexcusable impru- 
 dence of emotion on my part, into some suspicion of her state, 
 yet it passed away ; for she thinks rarely of herself, — I am 
 ever in her thoughts and seldom from her side, and you know, 
 too, the sanguine and credulous nature of her disease. But, 
 indeed, I now hope more than I have done since I knew her. 
 
 When, after an excited and adventurous life which had 
 comprised so many changes in so few years, I found myself 
 at rest in the bosom of a retired and remote part of the coun- 
 try, and Gertrude and her father were my only neighbours, I 
 was in that state of mind in which the passions, recruited by 
 solitude, are accessible to the purer and more divine emo- 
 tions. I was struck by Gertrude's beauty, I was charmed by 
 her simplicity. Worn in the usages and fashions of the world, 
 the inexperience, the trustfulness, the exceeding youth of her 
 mind, charmed and touched me ; but when I saw the stamp of 
 our national disease in her bright eye and transparent cheek, 
 I felt my love chilled while my interest was increased. I 
 fancied myself safe, and I went daily into the danger; I im- 
 agined so pure a light could not burn, and I was consumed. 
 Not till my anxiety grew into pain, my interest into terror, 
 did I know the secret of my own heart; and at the moment 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 129 
 
 that I discovered this secret, I discovered also that Gertrude 
 loved me! What a destiny was mine! what happiness, yet 
 what misery! Gertrude was my own — but for what period? 
 I might touch that soft hand, I might listen to the tenderest 
 confession from that silver voice; but all the while my heart 
 spoke of passion, my reason whispered of death. You know 
 that I am considered of a cold and almost callous nature, that 
 I am not easily moved into affection; but my very pride bowed 
 me here into weakness. There was so soft a demand upon 
 my protection, so constant an appeal to my anxiety. You 
 know that my father's quick temper burns within me, that I 
 am hot, and stern, and exacting; but one hasty word, one 
 thought of myself, here were inexcusable. So brief a time 
 might be left for her earthly happiness, — could I embitter 
 one moment? All that feeling of uncertainty which should 
 in prudence have prevented my love, increased it almost to a 
 preternatural excess. That which it is said mothers feel for 
 an only child in sickness, I feel for Gertrude. My existence 
 is not I — I exist in her ! 
 
 Her illness increased upon her at home ; they have recom- 
 mended travel. She chose the course we were to pursue, and, 
 fortunately, it was so familiar to me, that I have been ena- 
 bled to brighten the way. I am ever on the watch that she 
 shall not know a weary hour ; you would almost smile to see 
 how I have roused myself from my habitual silence, and to 
 find me — me, the scheming and worldly actor of real life — 
 plunged back into the early romance of my boyhood, and 
 charming the childish delight of Gertrude with the inven- 
 tion of fables and the traditions of the Rhine. 
 
 But I believe that I have succeeded in my object; if not, 
 what is left to me? Gertrude is better! — In that sentence 
 what visions of hope dawn upon me ! I wish you could have 
 seen Gertrude before we left England; you might then have 
 understood my love for her. Not that we have not, in the 
 gay capitals of Europe, paid our brief vows to forms more 
 richly beautiful; not that we have not been charmed by a 
 more brilliant genius, by a more tutored grace. But there is 
 that in Gertrude which I never saw before, — the union of the 
 
 9 
 
130 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 childish and the intellectual, an ethereal simplicity, a temper 
 that is never dimmed, a tenderness — God ! let me not speak 
 of her virtues, for they only tell me how little she is suited to 
 the earth. 
 
 You will direct to me at Mayence, whither our course now 
 leads us, and your friendship will find indulgence for a letter 
 that is so little a reply to yours. 
 
 Your sincere friend, 
 
 A. G. Tkevylyax. 
 
 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. 
 
 Gertrude had, indeed, apparently rallied during their stay 
 at Coblentz; and a French physician established in the town 
 (who adopted a peculiar treatment for consumption, which 
 had been attended with no ordinary success) gave her father 
 and Trevylyan a sanguine assurance of her ultimate recovery. 
 The time they passed within the white walls of Coblentz was, 
 therefore, the happiest and most cheerful part of their pil- 
 grimage. They visited the various places in its vicinity; but 
 the excursion which most delighted Gertrude was one to the 
 mountains of Taunus. 
 
 They took advantage of a beautiful September day; and, 
 crossing the river, commenced their tour from the Thai, or 
 valley of Ehrenbreitstein. They stopped on their way to 
 view the remains of a Roman tower in the valley; for the 
 whole of that district bears frequent witness of the ancient 
 conquerors of the world. The mountains of Taunus are still 
 intersected with the roads which the Romans cut to the mines 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE EIIIXE. 131 
 
 that supplied them with silver. Roman urns and inscribed 
 stones are often found in these ancient places. The stones, 
 inscribed with names utterly unknown, — a type of the uncer- 
 tainty of fame ! the urns, from which the dust is gone, a very 
 satire upon life! 
 
 Lone, gray, and mouldering, this tower stands aloft in the 
 valley; and the quiet Vane smiled to see the uniform of a 
 modern Prussian, with his white belt and lifted bayonet, by 
 the spot which had once echoed to the clang of the Eoman 
 arms. The soldier was paying a momentary court to a coun- 
 try damsel, whose straw hat and rustic dress did not stifle the 
 vanity of the sex ; and this rude and humble gallantry, in that 
 spot, was another moral in the history of human passions. 
 Above, the ramparts of a modern rule frowned down upon the 
 solitary tower, as if in the vain insolence with which present 
 power looks upon past decay, — the living race upon ancestral 
 greatness. And indeed, in this respect, rightly! for modern 
 times have no parallel to that degradation of human dignity 
 stamped upon the ancient world by the long sway of the Im- 
 perial Harlot, all slavery herself, yet all tyranny to earth; — 
 and, like her own Messalina, at once a prostitute and an 
 empress ! 
 
 They continued their course by the ancient baths of Ems, 
 and keeping by the banks of the romantic Lahn, arrived at 
 Holzapfel. 
 
 "Ah," said Gertrude, one day, as they proceeded to the 
 springs of the Carlovingian Wiesbaden, "surely perpetual 
 travel with those we love must be the happiest state of exis- 
 tence! If home has its comforts, it also has its cares; but 
 here we are at home with Nature, and the minor e\dls vanish 
 almost before they are felt." 
 
 "True," said Trevylyan, "we escape from 'the little,' 
 which is the curse of life ; the small cares that devour us up, 
 the grievances of the day. We are feeding the divinest part 
 of our nature, — the appetite to admire." 
 
 "But of all things wearisome," said Vane, "a succession of 
 changes is the most. There can be a monotony in variet}- it- 
 self. As the eye aches in gazing long at the new shapes of 
 
132 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 the kaleidoscope, the mind aches at the fatigue of a constant 
 alternation of objects; and we delightedly return to 'rest/ 
 which is to life what green is to the earth." 
 
 In the course of their sojourn among the various baths of 
 Taunus, they fell in, by accident, with a German student of 
 Heidelberg, who was pursuing the pedestrian excursions so 
 peculiarly favoured by his tribe. He was tamer and gentler 
 than the general herd of those young wanderers, and our 
 party were much pleased with his enthusiasm, because it was 
 unaffected. He had been in England, and spoke its language 
 almost as a native. 
 
 "Our literature," said he, one day, conversing with Yane, 
 "has two faults, — we are too subtle and too homel}'. "We do 
 not speak enough to the broad comprehension of mankind; 
 we are forever making abstract qualities of flesh and blood. 
 Our critics have turned your 'Hamlet' into an allegory; they 
 will not even allow Shakspeare to paint mankind, but insist 
 on his embodying qualities. They turn poetry into metaphy- 
 sics, and truth seems to them shallow, unless an allegory, 
 which is false, can be seen at the bottom. Again, too, with 
 our most imaginative works we mix a homeliness that we 
 fancy touching, but which in reality is ludicrous. We eter- 
 nally step from the sublime to the ridiculous; we want 
 taste." 
 
 " But not, I hope, French taste. Do not govern a Goethe, 
 or even a Richter, by a Boileaul " said Trevylyan. 
 
 "jSTo; but Boileau's taste was false. Men who have the 
 reputation for good taste often acquire it solely because of the 
 want of genius. By taste I mean a quick tact into the har- 
 mony of composition, the art of making the whole consistent 
 with its parts, the concinnitas. Schiller alone of our authors 
 has it. But we are fast mending; and by following shadows 
 so long we have been led at last to the substance. Our past 
 literature is to ns what astrology was to science, — false but 
 ennobling, and conducting us to the true language of the in- 
 tellectual heaven." 
 
 Another time the scenes they passed, interspersed with the 
 ruins of frequent monasteries, leading them to converse on 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 133 
 
 tlie monastic life, and the various additions time makes to 
 religion, the German said : " Perhaps one of the works most 
 wanted in the world is the history of Religion, We have 
 several books, it is true, on the subject, but none that supply 
 the want I allude to. A German ought to write it; for it is, 
 probably, only a German that would have the requisite learn- 
 ing. A German only, too, is likely to treat the mighty sub- 
 ject with boldness, and yet with veneration; without the 
 shallow flippancy of the Frenchman, without the timid secta- 
 rianism of the English. It would be a noble task, to trace 
 the winding mazes of antique falsehood; to clear up the first 
 glimmerings of divine truth; to separate Jehovah's word 
 from man's invention; to vindicate the All-merciful from the 
 dread creeds of bloodshed and of fear : and, watching in the 
 great Heaven of Truth the dawning of the True Star, follow 
 it — like the Magi of the East — till it rested above the real 
 God. Not indeed presuming to such a task," continued the 
 German, with a slight blush, "I have about me a humble 
 essay, which treats only of one part of that august subject; 
 which, leaving to a loftier genius the history of the true re- 
 ligion, may be considered as the history of a false one, — of 
 such a creed as Christianity supplanted in the North ; or such 
 as may perhaps be found among the fiercest of the savage 
 tribes. It is a fiction — as you may conceive; but yet, by a 
 constant reference to the early records of human learning, I 
 have studied to weave it up from truths. If you would like 
 to hear it, — it is very short — " 
 
 "Above all things," said Vane; and the German drew a 
 manuscript neatly bound from his pocket. 
 
 " After having myself criticised so insolently the faults of 
 our national literature," said he, smiling, "you will have a 
 right to criticise the faults that belong to so humble a disciple 
 of it; but you will see that, though I have commenced with 
 the allegorical or the supernatural, I have endeavoured to 
 avoid the subtlety of conceit, and the obscurity of design, 
 which I blame in the wilder of our authors. As to the style, 
 I wished to suit it to the subject; it ought to be, unless I err, 
 rugged and massive, — hewn, as it were, out of the rock of 
 
134 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 primeval language. But you, madam — doubtless you do not 
 understand German? " 
 
 "Her mother was an Austrian," said Vane; "and she knows 
 at least enough of the tongue to understand you; so pray 
 begin." 
 
 Without further preface, the German then commenced the 
 story, which the reader will find translated^ in the next 
 chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE FALLEN STAR; OK THE HISTORY OF A FALSE RELIGION. 
 
 And the Stabs sat, each on his ruby throne, and watched 
 with sleepless eyes upon the world. It was the night usher- 
 ing in the new year, a night on which every star receives 
 from the archangel that then visits the universal galaxy its 
 peculiar charge. The destinies of men and empires are then 
 portioned forth for the coming year, and, unconsciously to 
 ourselves, our fates become minioned to the stars. A hushed 
 and solemn night is that in which the dark gates of time 
 open to receive the ghost of the Dead Year, and the young 
 and radiant Stranger rushes forth from the clouded chasms of 
 Eternity. On that night, it is said that there are given to 
 the spirits that we see not a privilege and a power; the dead 
 are troubled in their forgotten graves, and men feast and 
 laugh, while demon and angel are contending for their doom. 
 
 It was night in heaven; all was unutterably silent; the 
 music of the spheres had paused, and not a sound came from 
 the angels of the stars; and they who sat upon those shining 
 thrones were three thousand and ten, each resembling each. 
 Eternal youth clothed their radiant limbs with celestial beauty, 
 and on their faces was written the dread of calm, — that fear- 
 
 i Nevertheless I beg to state seriously, that the German student is an im- 
 postor ; and that he has no right to wrest the parentage of the fiction from 
 the true author. 
 
THE riLGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 135 
 
 ful stillness which feels not, sympathizes not with the doom 
 over which it broods. War, tempest, pestilence, the rise of 
 empires and their fall, they ordain, they compass, unexultant 
 and uncompassionate. The fell and thrilling crimes that stalk 
 abroad when the world sleeps, — the parricide with his stealthy 
 step and horrent brow and lifted knife ; the unwifed mother 
 that glides out and looks behind, and behind, and shudders, 
 and casts her babe upon the river, and hears the wail, and 
 pities not — the splash, and does not tremble, — these the 
 starred kings behold, to these they lead the unconscious step; 
 but the guilt blanches not their lustre, neither doth remorse 
 wither their unwrinkled youth. Each star wore a kingly 
 diadem ; round the loins of each was a graven belt, graven with 
 many and mighty signs ; and the foot of each was on a burning 
 ball, and the right arm drooped over the knee as they bent 
 down from their thrones. They moved not a limb or feature, 
 save the finger of the right hand, which ever and anon moved 
 slowly pointing, and regulated the fates of men as the hand 
 of the dial speaks the career of time. 
 
 One only of the three thousand and ten wore not the same 
 aspect as his crowned brethren, — a star smaller than the rest, 
 and less luminous ; the countenance of this star was not im- 
 pressed with the awful calmness of the others, but there were 
 sullenness and discontent upon his mighty brow. 
 
 And this star said to himself, *' Behold ! I am created less 
 glorious than my fellows, and the archangel apportions not to 
 me the same lordly destinies. Not for me are the dooms of 
 kings and bards, the rulers of empires, or, yet nobler, the 
 swayers and harmonists of souls. Sluggish are the spirits 
 and base the lot of the men I am ordained to lead through a 
 dull life to a fameless grave. And wherefore? Is it mine 
 own fault, or is it the fault which is not mine, that I was 
 woven of beams less glorious than my brethren? Lo! when 
 the archangel comes, I will bow not my crowned head to his 
 decrees, I will speak, as the ancestral Lucifer before me : he 
 rebelled because of his glory, /because of my obscurity; he 
 from the ambition of pride, and /from its discontent." 
 
 And while the star was thus communing with himself, the 
 
136 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 upward heavens were parted as by a long river of light, and 
 adown that stream swiftly, and without sound, sped the arch- 
 angel visitor of the stars. His vast limbs floated in the liquid 
 lustre, and his outspread wings, each plume the glory of a 
 sun, bore him noiselessly along; but thick clouds veiled his 
 lustre from the eyes of mortals, and while above all was 
 bathed in the serenity of his splendour, tempest and storm 
 broke below over the children of the earth : " He bowed the 
 heavens and came down, and darkness was under his feet." 
 
 And the stillness on the faces of the stars became yet more 
 still, and the awfulness was humbled into awe. Right above 
 their thrones paused the course of the archangel; and his 
 wings stretched from east to west, overshadowing with the 
 shadow of light the immensity of space. Then forth, in the 
 shining stillness, rolled the dread music of his voice: and, 
 fulfilling the heraldry of God, to each star he appointed the 
 duty and the charge ; and each star bowed his head yet lower 
 as he heard the fiat, while his throne rocked and trembled at 
 the Majesty of the Word. But at last, when each of the 
 brighter stars had, in succession, received the mandate, and 
 the viceroyalty over the nations of the earth, the purple and 
 diadems of kings, the archangel addressed the lesser star as 
 he sat apart from his fellows. 
 
 "Behold," said the archangel, "the rude tribes of the 
 North, the fishermen of the river that flows beneath, and the 
 hunters of the forests that darken the mountain tops Avith 
 verdure! these be thy charge, and their destinies thy care. 
 Nor deem thou, Star of the sullen beams, that thy duties 
 are less glorious than the duties of thy brethren ; for the peas- 
 ant is not less to thy master and mine than the monarch ; nor 
 doth the doom of empires rest more upon the sovereign than 
 on the herd. The passions and the heart are the dominion of 
 the stars, — a mighty realm; nor less mighty beneath the hide 
 that garbs the shepherd than under the jewelled robes of the 
 eastern kings." 
 
 Then the star lifted his pale front from his breast, and an- 
 swered the archangel. 
 
 " Lo ! " he said, " ages have passed, and each year thou hast 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 137 
 
 appointed me to the same ignoble charge. Release me, I pray 
 thee, from the duties that I scorn ; or, if thou wilt that the 
 lowlier race of men be my charge, give unto me the charge 
 not of many, but of one, and suffer me to breathe into him the 
 desire that spurns the valleys of life, and ascends its steeps. 
 If the humble are given to me, let there be amongst them one 
 whom I may lead on the mission that shall abase the proud ; 
 for, behold, Appointer of the Stars, as I have sat for un- 
 counted years upon my solitary throne, brooding over the 
 things beneath, my spirit hath gathered wisdom from the 
 changes that shift below. Looking upon the tribes of earth, 
 I have seen how the multitude are swayed, and tracked the 
 steps that lead weakness into power; and fain would I be the 
 ruler of one who, if abased, shall aspire to rule." 
 
 As a sudden cloud over the face of noon was the change on 
 the brow of the archangel. 
 
 "Proud and melancholy star," said the herald, "thy wish 
 would war with the courses of the invisible destiny, that, 
 throned far above, sways and harmonizes all, — the source 
 from which the lesser rivers of fate are eternally gushing 
 through the heart of the universe of things. Thinkest thou 
 that thy wisdom, of itself, can lead the peasant to become a 
 king?" 
 
 And the croAvned star gazed undauntedly on the face of the 
 archangel, and answered, — 
 
 "Yea! Grant me but one trial ! " 
 
 Ere the archangel could reply, the farthest centre of the 
 Heaven was rent as by a thunderbolt; and the divine herald 
 covered his face with his hands, and a voice low and sweet 
 and mild, with the consciousness of unquestionable power, 
 spoke forth to the repining star. 
 
 "The time has arrived when thou mayest have thy wish. 
 Below thee, upon yon solitary plain, sits a mortal, gloomy 
 as thyself, who, born under thy influence, may be moulded to 
 thy will." 
 
 The voice ceased as the voice of a dream. Silence was over 
 the seas of space, and the archangel, once more borne aloft, 
 slowly soared away into the farther heaven, to promulgate the 
 
138 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 divine bidding to the stars of far-distant worlds. But the 
 soul of the discontented star exulted within itself; and it 
 said, " I will call forth a king from the valley of the herds- 
 man that shall trample on the kings subject to my fellows, 
 and render the charge of the contenmed star more glorious 
 than the minions of its favoured brethren; thus shall I re- 
 venge neglect! thus shall I prove my claim hereafter to the 
 heritage of the great of earth! " 
 
 At that time, though the world had rolled on for ages, and 
 the pilgrimage of man had passed through various states of 
 existence, which our dim traditionary knowledge has not pre- 
 served, yet the condition of our race in the northern hemi- 
 sphere was then what \oe, in our imperfect lore, have conceived 
 to be among the earliest. 
 
 By a rude and vast pile of stones, the masonry of arts for- 
 gotten, a lonely man sat at midnight, gazing upon the heavens. 
 A storm had just passed from the earth; the clouds had rolled 
 away, and the high stars looked down upon the rapid waters 
 of the Khine; and no sound save the roar of the waves, and 
 the dripping of the rain from the mighty trees, was heard 
 around the ruined pile. The white sheep lay scattered on the 
 plain, and slumber with them. He sat watching over the 
 herd, lest the foes of a neighbouring tribe seized them un- 
 awares, and thus he communed with himself: "The king sits 
 upon his throne, and is honoured by a warrior race, and the 
 warrior exults in the trophies he has won; the step of the 
 huntsman is bold upon the mountain-top, and his name is 
 sung at night round the pine-fires by the lips of the bard; and 
 the bard himself hath honour in the hall. But I, who belong 
 not to the race of kings, and whose limbs can bound not to 
 the rapture of war, nor scale the eyries of the eagle and the 
 haunts of the swift stag; whose hand cannot string the harp, 
 and whose voice is harsh in the song, — /have neither honour 
 nor command, and men bow not the head as I pass along; yet 
 do I feel within me the consciousness of a great power that 
 should rule my species — not obey. My eye pierces the secret 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 139 
 
 hearts of men. I see their thoughts ere their lips proclaim 
 them; and I scorn, while I see, the weakness and the vices 
 which I never shared, I laugh at the madness of the warrior; 
 I mock within my soul at the tyranny of kings. Surely there 
 is something in man's nature more fitted to command, more 
 worthy of renown, than the sinews of the arm, or the swift- 
 ness of the feet, or the accident of birth ! " 
 
 As Morven, the son of Osslah, thus mused within himself, 
 still looking at the heavens, the solitary man beheld a star 
 suddenly shooting from its place, and speeding through the 
 silent air, till it suddenly paused right over the midnight 
 river, and facing the inmate of the pile of stones. 
 
 As he gazed upon the star, strange thoughts grew slowly 
 over him. He drank, as it were, from its solemn aspect the 
 spirit of a great design. A dark cloud rapidly passing over 
 the earth snatched the star from his sight, but left to his 
 awakened mind the thoughts and the dim scheme that had 
 come to him as he gazed. 
 
 When the sun arose, one of his brethren relieved him of his 
 charge over the herd, and he went away, but not to his 
 father's home. Musingly he plunged into the dark and leaf- 
 less recesses of the winter forest; and shaped out of his wild 
 thoughts, more palpably and clearly, the outline of his daring 
 hope. While thus absorbed he heard a great noise in the 
 forest, and, fearful lest the hostile tribe of the Alrich might 
 pierce that way, he ascended one of the loftiest pine-trees, to 
 whose perpetual verdure the winter had not denied the shelter 
 he sought ; and, concealed by its branches, he looked anxiously 
 forth in the direction whence the noise had proceeded. And 
 IT came, — it came with a tramp and a crash, and a crushing 
 tread upon the crunched boughs and matted leaves that 
 strewed the soil; it came, it came, — the monster that the 
 world now holds no more, — the mighty Mammoth of the 
 North! Slowly it moved its huge strength along, and its 
 burning eyes glittered through the gloomy shade; its jaws, 
 falling apart, showed the grinders with which it snapped 
 asunder the young oaks of the forest; and the vast tusks, 
 which, curved downward to the midst of its massive limbs, 
 
140 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 glistened white and gliastly, curdling the blood of one des- 
 tined hereafter to be the dreadest ruler of the men of that 
 distant age. 
 
 The livid eyes of the monster fastened on the form of the 
 herdsman, even amidst the thick darkness of the pine. It 
 paused, it glared upon him: its jaws opened, and a low deep 
 sound, as of gathering thunder, seemed to the son of Osslah 
 as the knell of a dreadful grave. But after glaring on him 
 for some moments, it again, and calmly, pursued its terrible 
 way, crashing the boughs as it marched along, till the last 
 sound of its heavy tread died away upon his ear.^ 
 
 Ere yet, however, Morven summoned the courage to de- 
 scend the tree, he saw the shining of arms through the bare 
 branches of the wood, and presently a small band of the hos- 
 tile Alrich came into sight. He was perfectly hidden from 
 them ; and, listening as they passed him, he heard one say to 
 another, — 
 
 "The night covers all things; why attack them by day? " 
 
 And he who seemed the chief of the band, answered, — 
 
 "Right. To-night, when they sleep in their city, we will 
 upon them. Lo! they will be drenched in wine, and fall like 
 sheep into our hands." 
 
 "But where, chief," said a third of the band, "shall our 
 men hide during the day? for there are many hunters among 
 the youth of the Oestrich tribe, and they might see us in the 
 forest unawares, and arm their race against our coming." 
 
 "I have prepared for that," answered the chief. "Is not 
 the dark cavern of Oderlin at hand? Will it not shelter us 
 from the eyes of the victims?" 
 
 Then the men laughed, and, shouting, they went their way 
 adown the forest. 
 
 When they were gone, Morven cautiously descended, and, 
 striking into a broad path, hastened to a vale that lay be- 
 tween the forest and the river in which was the city where 
 the chief of his country dwelt. As he passed by the warlike 
 
 ^ The Critic will perceive that this sketch of tlie beast, whose race has per- 
 ished, is mainly intended to designate the remote period of the world in which 
 the tale is cast. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 141 
 
 men, giants in that day, who thronged the streets (if streets 
 they might be called), their half garments parting from their 
 huge limbs, the quiver at their backs, and the hunting spear 
 in their hand, they laughed and shouted out, and, pointing to 
 him, cried, "Morven the woman! Morven the cripple! what 
 dost thou among men?" 
 
 For the son of Osslah was small in stature and of slender 
 strength, and his step had halted from his birth; but he 
 passed through the warriors unheedingly. At the outskirts 
 of the city he came upon a tall pile in which some old men 
 dwelt by themselves, and counselled the king when times of 
 danger, or when the failure of the season, the famine or the 
 drought, perplexed the ruler, and clouded the savage fronts of 
 his warrior tribe. 
 
 They gave the counsels of experience, and when experience 
 failed, they drew, in their believing ignorance, assurances 
 and omens from the winds of heaven, the changes of the 
 moon, and the flights of the wandering birds. Filled — by the 
 voices of the elements, and the variety of mysteries, which 
 ever shift along the face of things, unsolved by the wonder 
 which pauses not, the fear which believes, and that eternal 
 reasoning of all experience, which assigns causes to effect — 
 with the notion of superior powers, they assisted their igno- 
 rance by the conjectures of their superstition. But as yet 
 they knew no craft and practised no voluntary delusion; they 
 trembled too much at the mysteries which had created their 
 faith to seek to belie them. They counselled as they believed, 
 and the bold dream of governing their warriors and their kings 
 by the wisdom of deceit had never dared to cross men thus 
 worn and gray with age. 
 
 The son of Osslah entered the vast pile with a fearless step, 
 and approached the place at the upper end of the hall where 
 the old men sat in conclave. 
 
 "How, base-born and craven-limbed!" cried the eldest, 
 who had been a noted warrior in his day, " darest thou enter 
 unsummoned amidst the secret councils of the wise men? 
 Knowest thou not, scattering! that the penalty is death? " 
 
 "Slay me, if thou wilt," answered Morven, "but hear! As 
 
142 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 I sat last night in tlie ruined palace of our ancient kings, tend- 
 ing, as my father bade me, the sheep that grazed around, lest 
 the fierce tribe of Alrich should descend unseen from the 
 mountains upon the herd, a storm came darkly on ; and when 
 the storm had ceased, and I looked above on the sky, I saw a 
 star descend from its height towards me, and a voice from the 
 star said : ' Son of Osslah, leave thy herd and seek the council 
 of the wise men and say unto tliem, that they take thee as 
 one of their number, or that sudden will be the destruction of 
 them and theirs. ' But I had courage to answer the voice, and 
 I said, 'Mock not the poor son of the herdsman. Behold, they 
 will kill me if I utter so rash a word, for I am poor and 
 valueless in the eyes of the tribe of Oestrich, and the great 
 in deeds and the gray of hair alone sit in the council of the 
 wise men.' 
 
 "Then the voice said: 'Do my bidding, and I will give thee 
 a token that thou comest from the Powers that sway the sea- 
 sons and sail upon the eagles of the winds. Say unto the 
 wise men this very night if they refuse to receive thee of 
 their band, evil shall fall upon them, and the morrow shall 
 dawn in blood.' 
 
 "Then the voice ceased, and the cloud passed over the star; 
 and I communed with myself, and came, dread father, 
 mournfully unto you; for I feared that ye would smite me 
 because of my bold tongue, and that ye would sentence me to 
 the death, in that I asked what may scarce be given even to 
 the sons of kings." 
 
 Then the grim elders looked one at the other, and marvelled 
 much, nor knew they what answer they should make to the 
 herdsman's son. 
 
 At length one of the wise men said, " Surely there must be 
 truth in the son of Osslah, for he would not dare to falsify 
 the great lights of Heaven. If he had given unto men the 
 words of the star, verily we might doubt the truth. But who 
 would brave the vengeance of the gods of night? " 
 
 Then the elders shook their heads approvingly; but one an- 
 swered and said, — 
 
 "Shall we take the herdsman's son as our equal? Xo!" 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 143 
 
 The name of the man who thus answered was Darvan, and his 
 words were pleasing to the ehlers. 
 
 But Morven si)oke out : " Of a truth, councillors of kings, 
 I look not to be an equal with yourselves. Enough if I tend 
 the gates of your palace, and serve you as the son of Osslah 
 may serve ; " and he bowed his head humbly as he spoke. 
 
 Then said the chief of the elders, for he was wiser than the 
 others, " But how wilt thou deliver us from the evil that is to 
 come? Doubtless the star has informed thee of the service 
 thou canst render to us if we take thee into our palace, as 
 well as the ill that will fall on us if we refuse." 
 
 Morven answered meekly, "Surely, if thou acceptest thy 
 servant, the star will teach him that which may requite thee; 
 but as yet he knows only what he has uttered." 
 
 Then the sages bade him withdraw, and they communed with 
 themselves, and they differed much; but though fierce men, 
 and bold at the war-cry of a human foe, they shuddered at 
 the prophecy of a star. So they resolved to take the son of 
 Osslah, and suffer him to keep the gate of the council-hall. 
 
 He heard their decree and bowed his head, and went to the 
 gate, and sat down by it in silence. 
 
 And the sun went down in the west, and the first stars of 
 the twilight began to glimmer, when Morven started from his 
 seat, and a trembling appeared to seize his limbs. His lips 
 foamed; an agony and a fear possessed him; he writhed as a 
 man whom the spear of a foeman has pierced with a mortal 
 wound, and suddenly fell upon his face on the stony earth. 
 
 The elders approached him; wondering, they lifted him 
 up. He slowly recovered as from a swoon; his eyes rolled 
 wildly. 
 
 "Heard ye not the voice of the star? " he said. 
 
 And the chief of the elders answered, "Nay, we heard no 
 sound." 
 
 Then Morven sighed heavily. 
 
 "To me only the word was given. Summon instantly, 
 councillors of the king, summon the armed men, and all the 
 youth of the tribe, and let them take the sword and the spear, 
 and follow thy servant! For lo! the star hath announced to 
 
144 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 him that the foe shall fall into our hands as the wild beasts of 
 the forests." 
 
 The son of Osslah spoke with the voice of command, and 
 the elders were amazed. "Why pause ye?" he cried. "Do 
 the gods of the night lie? On my head rest the peril if I 
 deceive ye." 
 
 Then the elders communed together; and they went forth 
 and summoned the men of arms, and all the young of the 
 tribe ; and each man took the sword and the spear, and Mor- 
 ven also. And the son of Osslah walked first, still looking 
 up at the star, and he motioned them to be silent, and moved 
 with a stealthy step. 
 
 So they Avent through the thickest of the forest, till they 
 came to the mouth of a great cave, overgrown with aged and 
 matted trees, and it was called the Cave of Oberlin; and he 
 bade the leaders place the armed men on either side the cave, 
 to the right and to the left, among the bushes. 
 
 So they watched silently till the night deepened, when they 
 heard a noise in the cave and the sound of feet, and forth 
 came an armed man; and the spear of Morven pierced him, 
 and he fell dead at the mouth of the cave. Another and an- 
 other, and both fell ! Then loud and long was heard the war- 
 cry of Alrich, and forth poured, as a stream over a narrow 
 bed, the river of armed men. And the sons of Oestrich fell 
 upon them, and the foe were sorely perplexed and terrified by 
 the suddenness of the battle and the darkness of the night; 
 and there was a great slaughter. 
 
 And when the morning came, the children of Oestrich 
 counted the slain, and found the leader of Alrich and the 
 chief men of the tribe amongst them ; and great was the joy 
 thereof. So they went back in triumph to the city, and they 
 carried the brave son of Osslah on their shoulders, and 
 shouted forth, "Glory to the servant of the star." 
 
 And Morven dwelt in the council of the wise men. 
 
 Now the king of the tribe had one daughter, and she was 
 stately amongst the women of the tribe, and fair to look upon. 
 And Morven gazed upon her with the eyes of love, but he did 
 not dare to speak. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 145 
 
 Now the son of Osslah laughed secretly at the foolishness 
 of men; he loved them not, for they had mocked him; he 
 honoured them not, for he had blinded the wisest of their 
 leaders. He shunned their feasts and merriment, and lived 
 apart and solitary. The austerity of his life increased the 
 mysterious homage which his commune with the stars had 
 won liini, and the boldest of the warriors bowed his head to 
 the favourite of the gods. 
 
 One day he was wandering by the side of the river, and he 
 saw a large bird of prey rise from the waters, and give chase 
 to a hawk that had not yet gained the full strength of its 
 wings. From his youth the solitary Morven had loved to 
 watch, in the great forests and by the banks of the mighty 
 stream, the habits of the things which nature has submitted 
 to man; and looking now on the birds, he said to himself, 
 "Thus is it ever; by cunning or by strength each thing wishes 
 to master its kind." While thus moralizing, the larger bird 
 had stricken down the hawk, and it fell terrified and panting 
 at his feet. Morven took the hawk in his hands, and the 
 vulture shrieked above him, wheeling nearer and nearer to its 
 protected prey; but Morven scared away the vulture, and 
 placing the hawk in his bosom he carried it home, and tended 
 it carefully, and fed it from his hand until it had regained its 
 strength; and the hawk knew him, and followed him as a 
 dog. And JMorven said, smiling to himself, "Behold, the 
 credulous fools around me put faith in the flight and motion 
 of birds. I will teach this poor hawk to minister to my 
 ends." So he tamed the bird, and tutored it according to its 
 nature; but he concealed it carefully from others, and cher- 
 ished it in secret. 
 
 The king of the country was old, and like to die, and the 
 eyes of the tribe were turned to his two sons, nor knew they 
 which was the worthier to reign. And Morven, passing 
 through the forest one evening, saw the younger of the two, 
 who was a great hunter, sitting mournfully under an oak, and 
 looking with musing eyes upon the ground. 
 
 " Wherefore musest thou, swift-footed Siror? " said the 
 son of Osslah; "and wherefore art thou sad?" 
 
 10 
 
146 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 "Thou canst not assist me," answered the prince, sternly; 
 "take thy way." 
 
 "Nay," answered Morven, "thou knowest not what thou 
 say est; am I not the favourite of the stars?" 
 
 "Away, I am no graybeard whom the approach of death 
 makes doting : talk not to me of the stars ; I know only the 
 things that my eye sees and my ear drinks in." 
 
 "Hush," said Morven, solemnly, and covering his face; 
 "hush! lest the heavens avenge thy rashness. But, behold, 
 the stars have given unto me to pierce the secret hearts of 
 others; and I can tell thee the thoughts of thine." 
 
 " Speak out, base-born ! " 
 
 " Thou art the younger of two, and thy name is less known in 
 war than the name of thy brother : yet wouldst thou desire to be 
 set over his head, and to sit on the high seat of thy father? " 
 
 The young man turned pale. "Thou hast truth in thy 
 lips," said he, with a faltering voice. 
 
 "Not from me, but from the stars, descends the truth." 
 
 "Can the stars grant my wish? " 
 
 "They can: let us meet to-morrow." Thus saying, Morven 
 passed into the forest. 
 
 The next day, at noon, they met again. 
 
 " I have consulted the gods of night, and they have given 
 me the power that I prayed for, but on one condition." 
 
 "Name it." 
 
 "That thou sacrifice thy sister on their altars; thou must 
 build up a heap of stones, and take thy sister into the wood, 
 and lay her on the pile, and plunge thy sword into her heart; 
 so only shalt thou reign." 
 
 The prince shuddered, and started to his feet, and shook 
 his spear at the pale front of Morven. 
 
 "Tremble," said the son of Osslah, with a loud voice. 
 "Hark to the gods who threaten thee with death, that thou 
 hast dared to lift thine arm against their servant!" 
 
 As he spoke, the thunder rolled above; for one of the fre- 
 quent storms of the early summer was about to break. The 
 spear dropped from the prince's hand; he sat down, and cast 
 his eyes on the ground. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 147 
 
 "Wilt thou do the bidding of the stars, and reign?" said 
 Morven. 
 
 "I will! " cried Siror, with a desperate voice. 
 
 "This evening, then, when the sun sets, thou wilt lead her 
 hither, alone; I may not attend thee. Now, let us pile the 
 stones." 
 
 Silently the huntsman bent his vast strength to the frag- 
 ments of rock that Mervon pointed to him, and tliey built the 
 altar, and went their way. 
 
 And beautiful is the dying of the great sun, when the last 
 song of the birds fades into the lap of silence; when the 
 islands of the cloud are bathed in light, and the first star 
 springs up over the grave of day! 
 
 "Whither leadest thou my steps, my brother?" said Orna; 
 " and why doth thy lip quiver ; and why dost thou turn away 
 thy face? " 
 
 " Is not the forest beautiful ; does it not tempt us forth, my 
 sister? " 
 
 "And wherefore are those heaps of stone piled together? " 
 
 "Let others answer; /piled them not." 
 
 "Thou tremblest, brother: we will return." 
 
 "Not so; by these stones is a bird that my shaft pierced to- 
 day, — a bird of beautiful plumage that I slew for thee." 
 
 "We are by the pile; where hast thou laid the bird? " 
 
 " Here ! " cried Siror ; and he seized the maiden in his arms, 
 and, casting her on the rude altar, he drew forth his sword to 
 smite her to the heart. 
 
 Right over the stones rose a giant oak, the growth of im- 
 memorial ages ; and from the oak, or from the heavens, broke 
 forth a loud and solemn voice, " Strike not, son of kings ! the 
 stars forbear their own: the maiden thou shalt not slay; yet 
 shalt thou reign over the race of Oestrich ; and thou shalt give 
 Orna as a bride to the favourite of the stars. Arise, and go 
 thy way ! " 
 
 The voice ceased : the terror of Orna had overpowered for a 
 time the springs of life ; and Siror bore her home through the 
 wood in his strong arms. 
 
 "Alas! " said Morven, when, at the next day, he again met 
 
148 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 the aspiring prince ; " alas ! the stars have ordained me a lot 
 which my heart desires not : for I, lonely of life, and crippled 
 of shape, am insensible to the tires of love ; and ever, as thou 
 and thy tribe know, I have shunned the eyes of women, for 
 the maidens laughed at my halting step and my sullen feat- 
 ures; and so in my youth I learned betimes to banish all 
 thoughts of love. But since they told me (as they declared 
 to thee), that only through that marriage, thou, beloved 
 prince ! canst obtain thy father's plumed crown, I yield me to 
 their will." 
 
 "But," said the prince, "not until I am king can I give 
 thee my sister in marriage; for thou knowest that my sire 
 would smite me to the dust if I asked him to give the flower 
 of our race to the son of the herdsman Osslah." 
 
 "Thou speakest the words of truth. Go home and fear not; 
 but, when thou art king, the sacrifice must be made, and Orna 
 mine. Alas! how can I dare to lift mine eyes to her! But 
 so ordain the dread kings of the night ! — who shall gainsay 
 their word? " 
 
 "The day that sees me king sees Orna thine," answered the 
 prince. 
 
 Morven walked forth, as was his wont, alone ; and he said 
 to himself, " The king is old, yet may he live long between 
 me and mine hope 1 " and he began to cast in his mind how he 
 might shorten the time. Thus absorbed, he wandered on so 
 unheedingly that night advanced, and he had lost his path 
 among the thick woods and knew not how to regain his home. 
 So he lay down quietly beneath a tree, and rested till day 
 dawned; then hunger came upon him, and he searched among 
 the bushes for such simple roots as those with which, for he 
 was ever careless of food, he was used to appease the cravings 
 of nature. 
 
 He found, among other more familiar herbs and roots, a red 
 berry of a sweetish taste, which he had never observed before. 
 He ate of it sparingly, and had not proceeded far in the wood 
 before he found his eyes swim, and a deadly sickness came 
 over him. For several hours he lay convulsed on the ground, 
 expecting death; but the gaunt spareness of his frame, and 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 149 
 
 his unvarying abstinence, prevailed over the poison, and he 
 recovered slowly, and after great anguish. But he went with 
 feeble steps back to the spot where the berries grew, and, 
 plucking several, hid them in his bosom, and by nightfall 
 regained the city. 
 
 The next day he went forth among his father's herds, and 
 seizing a lamb, forced some of the berries into his stomach, 
 and the lamb, escaping, ran away, and fell down dead. Then 
 Morven took some more of the berries and boiled them down, 
 and mixed the juice with wine, and he gave the wine in secret 
 to one of his father's servants, and the servant died. 
 
 Then Morven sought the king, and coming into his pres- 
 ence, alone, he said unto him, " How fares my lord? " 
 
 The king sat on a couch made of the skins of wolves, and 
 his eye was glassy and dim ; but vast were his aged limbs, 
 and huge was his stature, and he had been taller by a head 
 than the children of men, and none living could bend the bow 
 he had beut in youth; gray, gaunt, and worn, as some mighty 
 bones that are dug at times from the bosom of the earth, — a 
 relic of the strength of old. 
 
 And the king said faintly, and with a ghastly laugh, — 
 
 "The men of my years fare ill. What avails my strength? 
 Better had I been born a cripple like thee, so should I have 
 had nothing to lament in growing old." 
 
 The red flush passed over Morven's brow; but he bent 
 humbly, — 
 
 "0 king, what if I could give thee back thy youth? What 
 if I could restore to thee the vigour which distinguished thee 
 above the sons of men, when the warriors of Alrich fell like 
 grass before thy sword? " 
 
 Then the king uplifted his dull eyes, and he said, — 
 
 "What meanest thou, son of Osslah? Surely I hear much 
 of thy great wisdom, and how thou speakest nightly with the 
 stars. Can the gods of the night give unto thee the secret to 
 make the old young? " 
 
 "Tempt them not by doubt," said Morven, reverently. 
 "All things are possible to the rulers of the dark hour; 
 and, lo! the star that loves thy servant spake to him at the 
 
150 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 dead of night, and said, 'Arise, and go unto the king; and 
 tell him that the stars honour the tribe of Oestrich, and re- 
 member how the king bent his bow against the sons of Alrich; 
 wherefore, look thou under the stone that lies to the right of 
 thy dwelling, even beside the pine tree, and thou shalt see a 
 vessel of clay, and in the vessel thou wilt find a sweet liquid, 
 that shall make the king thy master forget his age forever.' 
 Therefore, my lord, when the morning rose I went forth, and 
 looked under the stone, and behold the vessel of clay; and 
 I have brought it hither to my lord the king." 
 
 "Quick, slave, quick! that I may drink and regain my 
 youth!" 
 
 "Nay, listen, king! further said the star to me, — 
 
 '"It is only at night, when the stars have power, that this 
 their gift will avail; wherefore the king must wait till the 
 hush of the midnight, when the moon is high, and then may 
 he mingle the liquid with his wine. And he must reveal to 
 none that he hath received the gift from the hand of the ser- 
 vant of the stars. For they do their work in secret, and when 
 men sleep; therefore they love not the babble of mouths, and 
 he who reveals their benefits shall surely die.'" 
 
 "Fear not," said the king, grasping the vessel; "none shall 
 know : and, behold, I will rise on the morrow ; and my two 
 sons, wrangling for my crown — verily I shall be younger 
 than they!" 
 
 Then the king laughed loud; and he scarcely thanked the 
 servant of the stars, neither did he promise him reward; 
 for the kings in those days had little thought save for 
 themselves. 
 
 And Morven said to him, "Shall I not attend my lord? 
 — for without me, perchance, the drug might fail of its 
 effect." 
 
 "Ay," said the king, "rest here." 
 
 "Nay," replied Morven; "thy servants will marvel and talk 
 much, if they see the son of Osslah sojourning in thy palace. 
 So would the displeasure of the gods of night perchance be 
 incurred. Suffer that the lesser door of the palace be un- 
 barred, so that at the night hour, when the moon is midway 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 151 
 
 in the heavens, I may steal unseen into thy chamber, and mix 
 the liquid with thy wine." 
 
 "So be it," said the king. "Thou art wise, though thy 
 limbs are crooked and curt; and the stars might have chosen a 
 taller man." Then the king laughed again; and Morven 
 laughed too, but there was danger in the mirth of the son of 
 Osslah. 
 
 The night had begun to wane, and the inhabitants of Oest- 
 rich were buried in deep sleep, when, hark! a sharp voice 
 was heard crying out in the streets, "Woe, woe! Awake, 
 ye sous of Oestrich! woe!" Then forth, wild, haggard, 
 alarmed, spear in hand, rushed the giant sons of the rugged 
 tribe, and they saw a man on a height in the middle of the 
 city, shrieking "Woe!" and it was Morven, the son of 
 Osslah! And he said unto them, as they gathered round 
 him, "Men and warriors, tremble as ye hear. The star of 
 the west hath spoken to me, and thus said the star: 'Evil 
 shall fall upon the kingly house of Oestrich, — yea, ere the 
 morning dawn ; wherefore, go thou mourning into the streets, 
 and wake the inhabitants to woe ! ' So I rose and did the 
 bidding of the star." And while Morven was yet speaking, 
 a servant of the king's house ran up to the crowd, crying 
 loudly, "The king is dead!" So they went into the palace 
 and found the king stark upon his couch, and his huge limbs 
 all cramped and crippled by the pangs of death, and his 
 hands clenched as if in menace of a foe, — the Foe of all liv- 
 ing flesh! Then fear came on the gazers, and they looked on 
 Morven with a deeper awe than the boldest warrior would 
 have called forth ; and they bore him back to the council-hall 
 of the wise men, wailing and clashing their arms in woe, and 
 shouting, ever and anon, "Honour to Morven the prophet!" 
 And that was the first time the word prophet was ever used 
 in those countries. 
 
 At noon, on the third day from the king's death, Siror 
 sought Morven, and he said, " Lo, my father is no more, and 
 the people meet this evening at sunset to elect his successor, 
 and the warriors and the young men will surely choose my 
 brother, for he is more known in war. Fail me not therefore." 
 
152 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 "Peace, boy!" saidMorven, sternly; "nor dare to question 
 the truth of the gods of night." 
 
 For Morven now began to presume on his power among the 
 people, and to speak as rulers speak, even to the sons of 
 kings ; and the voice silenced the fiery Siror, nor dared he to 
 reply. 
 
 "Behold," said Morven, taking up a chaplet of coloured 
 plumes, "wear this on thy head, and put on a brave face, for 
 the people like a hopeful spirit, and go down with thy brother 
 to the place where the new king is to be chosen, and leave 
 the rest to the stars. But, above all things, forget not that 
 chaplet; it has been blessed by the gods of night." 
 
 The prince took the chaplet and returned home. 
 
 It was evening, and the warriors and chiefs of the tribe 
 were assembled in the place where the new king was to be 
 elected. And the voices of the many favoured Prince Vol- 
 toch, the brother of Siror, for he had slain twelve foemen 
 with his spear; and verily, in those days, that was a great 
 virtue in a king. 
 
 Suddenly there was a shout in the streets, and the people 
 cried out, " Way for Morven the prophet, the prophet ! " Por 
 the people held the son of Osslah in even greater respect than 
 did the chiefs. Now, since he had become of note, Morven 
 had assumed a majesty of air which the son of the herdsman 
 knew not in his earlier days ; and albeit his stature was short, 
 and his limbs halted, yet his countenance was grave and high. 
 He only of the tribe wore a garment that swept the ground, 
 and his head was bare and his long black hair descended to 
 his girdle, and rarely was change or human passion seen in 
 his calm aspect. He feasted not, nor drank wine, nor was his 
 presence frequent in the streets. He laughed not, neither 
 did he smile, save when alone in the forest, — and then he 
 laughed at the follies of his tribe. 
 
 So he walked slowly through the crowd, neither turning to 
 the left nor to the right, as the crowd gave way ; and he sup- 
 ported his steps with a staff of the knotted pine. 
 
 And when he came to the place where the chiefs were met, 
 and the two princes stood in the centre, he bade the people 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 153 
 
 around him proclaim silence; then mounting on a huge frag- 
 ment of rock, lie thus spake to the multitude : — 
 
 "Princes, Warriors, and Bards! ye, council of the wise 
 men ! and ye, hunters of the forests and snarers of the fishes 
 of the streams ! hearken to Morven, the son of Osslah. Ye 
 know that I am lowly of race and weak of limb; but did I 
 . not give into your hands the tribe of Alrich, and did ye not 
 slay them in the dead of night with a great slaughter? Surely, 
 ye must know this of himself did not the herdsman's son; 
 surely he was but the agent of the bright gods that love the 
 children of Oestrich! Three nights since when slumber was 
 on the earth, was not my voice heard in the streets? Did 
 I not proclaim woe to the kingly house of Oestrich? and 
 verily the dark arm had fallen on the bosom of the mighty, 
 that is no more. Could I have dreamed this thing merely in 
 a dream, or was I not as the voice of the bright gods that 
 watch over the tribes of Oestrich? Wherefore, men and 
 chiefs ! scorn not the son of Osslah, but listen to his words ; 
 for are they not the wisdom of the stars? Behold, last night, 
 I sat alone in the valley, and the trees were hushed around, 
 and not a breath stirred; and I looked upon the star that 
 counsels the son of Osslah; and I said, 'Dread conqueror of 
 the cloud! thou that bathest thy beauty in the streams and 
 piercest the pine-boughs with thy presence ; behold thy ser- 
 vant grieved because the mighty one hath passed away, and 
 many foes surround the houses of my brethren; and it is well 
 that they should have a king valiant and prosperous in war, 
 the cherished of the stars. Wherefore, star! as thou gavest 
 into our hands the warriors of Alrich, and didst warn us of 
 the fall of the oak of our tribe, wherefore I pray thee give 
 unto the people a token that they may choose that king whom 
 the gods of the night prefer ! ' Then a low voice, sweeter than 
 the music of the bard, stole along the silence. 'Thy love for 
 thy race is grateful to the stars of night: go, then, son of 
 Osslah, and seek the meeting of the chiefs and the people to 
 choose a king, and tell them not to scorn thee because thou art 
 slow to the chase, and little known in war; for the stars give 
 thee wisdom as a recompense for all. Say unto the people that 
 
154 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 as the wise men of the council shape their lessons by the flight 
 of birds, so by the flight of birds shall a token be given unto 
 them, and they shall choose their kings. For, saith the star of 
 night, the birds are the children of the winds, they pass to 
 and fro along the ocean of the air, and visit the clouds that 
 are the war-ships of the gods; and their music is but broken 
 melodies which they glean from the harps above. Are they 
 not the messengers of the storm? Ere the stream chafes 
 against the bank, and the rain descends, know ye not, by the 
 wail of birds and their low circle over the earth, that the tem- 
 pest is at hand? Wherefore, wisely do ye deem that the chil- 
 dren of the air are the fit interpreters between the sons of 
 men and the lords of the world above. Say then to the people 
 and the chiefs that they shall take, from among the doves 
 that build their nests in the roof of the palace, a white dove, 
 and they shall let it loose in the air, and verily the gods of 
 the night shall deem the dove as a prayer coming from the 
 people, and they shall send a messenger to grant the prayer 
 and give to the tribes of Oestrich a king worthy of 
 themselves.' 
 
 "With that the star spoke no more." 
 
 Then the friends of Voltoch murmured among themselves, 
 and they said, "Shall this man dictate to us who shall be 
 king?" But the people and the warriors shouted, "Listen to 
 the star; do we not give or deny battle according as the bird 
 flies, — shall we not by the same token choose him by whom 
 the battle should be led? " And the thing seemed natural to 
 them, for it was after the custom of the tribe. Then they 
 took one of the doves that built in the roof of the palace, and 
 they brought it to the spot where Morven stood, and he, look- 
 ing up to the stars and muttering to himself, released the 
 bird. 
 
 There was a copse of trees at a little distance from the 
 spot, and as the dove ascended, a hawk suddenly rose from 
 the copse and pursued the dove; and the dove was terrified, 
 and soared circling high above the crowd, when lo, the hawk, 
 poising itself one moment on its wings, swooped with a sudden 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 155 
 
 swoop, and, abandoning its prey, alighted on the plumed 
 head of Siror. 
 
 "Behold," cried Morven in a loud voice, "behold your 
 king!" 
 
 "Hail, all hail the king!" shouted the people. "All hail 
 the chosen of the stars ! " 
 
 Then Morven lifted his right hand and the hawk left the 
 prince and alighted on Morven's shoulder. "Bird of the 
 gods ! " said he, reverently, " hast thou not a secret message 
 for my ear? " Then the hawl^ put its beak to Morven's ear, 
 and Morven bowed his head submissively; and the hawk 
 rested with Morven from that moment and would not be 
 scared away. And Morven said, "The stars have sent me 
 this bird, that in the day-time when I see them not, we may 
 never be without a councillor in distress." 
 
 So Siror was made king and Morven the son of Osslah was 
 constrained by the king's will to take Orna for his wife; and 
 the people and the chiefs honoured Morven the prophet above 
 all the elders of the tribe. 
 
 One day Morven said unto himself, musing, "Am I not 
 already equal with the king, — nay, is not the king my ser- 
 vant? Did I not place him over the heads of his brothers? 
 Am I not, therefore, more fit to reign than he is; shall I not 
 push him from his seat? It is a troublesome and stormy 
 office to reign over the wild men of Oestrich, to feast in the 
 crowded hall, and to lead the warriors to the fray. Surely if 
 I feasted not, neither went out to war, they might say, 'This 
 is no king, but the cripple Morven;' and some of the race of 
 Siror might slay me secretly. But can I not be greater far 
 than kings, and continue to choose and govern them, living 
 as now at mine own ease? Verily the stars shall give me a 
 new palace, and many subjects." 
 
 Among the wise men was Darvan ; and Morven feared him, 
 for his eye often sought the movements of the son of Osslah. 
 
 And Morven said, "It were better to trust this man than to 
 blind, for surely I want a helpmate and a -friend." So he 
 said to the wise man as he sat alone watching the setting 
 sun, — 
 
156 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE, 
 
 "It seemeth to me, Darvaii! that we ought to build a 
 great pile in honour of the stars, and the pile should be more 
 glorious than all the palaces of the chiefs and the palace of 
 the king; for are not the stars our masters? And thou and I 
 should be the chief dwellers in this new palace, and we would 
 serve the gods of night and fatten their altars with the choicest 
 of the herd and the freshest of the fruits of the earth." 
 
 And Darvan said, " Thou speakest as becomes the servant 
 of the stars. But will the people help to build the pile? For 
 they are a warlike race and they^ love not toil." 
 
 And Morven answered, " Doubtless the stars will ordain the 
 work to be done. Fear not." 
 
 " In truth thou art a wondrous man ; thy words ever come 
 to pass, " answered Darvan ; " and I wish thou wouldest teach 
 me, friend, the language of the stars." 
 
 "Assuredly if thou servest me, thou shalt know," answered 
 the proud Morven; and Darvan was secretly wroth that the 
 son of the herdsman should command the service of an elder 
 and a chief. 
 
 And when Morven returned to his wife he found her weep- 
 ing much. Now she loved the son of Osslah with an exceed- 
 ing love, for he was not savage and fierce as the men she had 
 known, and she was proud of his fame among the tribe; and 
 he took her in his arms and kissed her, and asked her why 
 she wept. Then she told him that her brother the king had 
 visited her, and had spoken bitter words of Morven : " He 
 taketh from me the affection of my people," said Siror, "and 
 blindeth them with lies. And since he hath made me king, 
 what if he take my kingdom from me? Verily a new tale of 
 the stars might undo the old." And the king had ordered her 
 to keep watch on Morven's secrecy, and to see whether truth 
 was in him when he boasted of his commune with the Powers 
 of night. 
 
 But Orna loved Morven better than Siror, therefore she 
 told her husband all. 
 
 And Morven resented the king's ingratitude, and was trou- 
 bled much, for a king is a powerful foe; but he comforted 
 Orna, and bade her dissemble, and complain also of him to 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 157 
 
 her brother, so that he might confide to her unsuspectingly- 
 whatsoever he might design against Morven. 
 
 There was a cave by Morven's house in which he kept the 
 sacred haAvk, and wherein he secretly trained and nurtured 
 other birds against future need; and the door of the cave was 
 always barred. And one day he was thus engaged when he 
 beheld a chink in the wall that he had never noted before, 
 and the sun came playfully in ; and while he looked he per- 
 ceived the sunbeam was darkened, and presently he saw a 
 human face peering in through the chink. And Morven trem- 
 bled, for he knew he had been watched. He ran hastily from 
 the cave ; but the spy had disappeared among the trees, and 
 Morven went straight to the chamber of Darvan and sat him- 
 self down. And Darvan did not return home till late, and he 
 started and turned pale when he saw Morven. But Morven 
 greeted him as a brother, and bade him to a feast, which, for 
 the first time, he purposed giving at the full of the moon, in 
 honour of the stars. And going out of Darvan's chamber he 
 returned to his wife, and bade her rend her hair, and go at 
 the dawn of day to the king her brother, and complain bit- 
 terly of Morven's treatment, and pluck the black plans from 
 the breast of the king. " For surely, " said he, " Darvan hath 
 lied to thy brother, and some evil waits me that I would fain 
 know." 
 
 So the next morning Orna sought the king, and she said, 
 "The herdsman's son hath reviled me, and spoken harsh 
 words to me; shall I not be avenged?" 
 
 Then the king stamped his feet and shook his mighty 
 sword. "Surely thou shalt be avenged; for I have learned 
 from one of the elders that which convinceth me that the man 
 hath lied to the people, and the base-born shall surely die. 
 Yea, the first time that he goeth alone into the forest my 
 brother and I will fall upon him and smite him to the death." 
 And with this comfort Siror dismissed Orna. 
 
 And Orna flung herself at the feet of her husband. " Fly 
 now, my beloved ! — fly into the forests afar from my breth- 
 ren, or surely the sword of Siror will end thy days." 
 
 Then the son of Osslah folded his arms, and seemed buried 
 
158 THE PILGKBIS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 in black thoughts; nor did he heed the voice of Orna, until 
 again and again she had implored him to fly. 
 
 "Fly!" he said at length. *'Xay, I was doubting what 
 punishment the stars should pour down upon our foe. Let 
 warriors fly. Morven the prophet conquers by arms mightier 
 than the sword." 
 
 Nevertheless Morven was perplexed in his mind, and knew 
 not how to save himself from the vengeance of the king, 
 Now, while he was musing hopelessly he heard a roar of 
 waters; and behold, the river, for it was now the end of 
 autumn, had burst its bounds, and was rushing along the val- 
 ley to the houses of the city. And now the men of the tribe, 
 and the women, and the children, came running, and with 
 shrieks, to Morven's house, crying, "Behold, the river has 
 burst upon us ! Save us, ruler of the stars ! " 
 
 Then the sudden thought broke upon Morven, and he re- 
 solved to risk his fate upon one desperate scheme. 
 
 And he came out from the house calm and sad, and he said, 
 " Ye know not what ye ask ; I cannot save ye from this peril : 
 ye have brought it on yourselves." And they cried, "How? 
 son of Osslah! We are ignorant of our crime." 
 
 And he answered, "Go down to the king's palace and wait 
 before it, and surely I will follow ye, and ye shall learn 
 wherefore ye have incurred this punishment from the gods." 
 Then the crowd rolled murmuring back, as a receding sea; 
 and when it was gone from the place, Morven went alone to 
 the house of Darvan, which was next his own. And Darvan 
 was greatly terrified; for he was of a great age, and had no 
 children, neither friends, and he feared that he could not of 
 himself escape the waters. 
 
 And Morven said to him soothingly, " Lo, the people love 
 me, and I will see that thou art saved ; for verily thou hast 
 been friendly to me, and done me much service with the 
 king." 
 
 And as he thus spake, Morven opened the door of the house 
 and looked forth, and saw that they were quite alone. Then 
 he seized the old man by the throat and ceased not his gripe 
 till he was quite dead; and leaving the body of the elder on 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 159 
 
 the floor, Morven stole from the house and shut the gate. 
 And as he was going to his cave he mused a little while, 
 when, hearing the mighty roar of the waves advancing, and 
 far off the shrieks of women, he lifted up his head and said 
 proudly, "No, iu this hour terror alone shall be my slave; I 
 will use no art save the power of my soul." So, leaning on 
 his pine-staff, he strode down to the palace. And it was now 
 evening, and many of the men held torches, that they might 
 see each other's faces in the universal fear. Red flashed the 
 quivering flames on the dark robes and pale front of Morven ; 
 and he seemed mightier than the rest, because his face alone 
 was calm amidst the tumult. And louder and hoarser became 
 the roar of the waters ; and swift rushed the shades of night 
 over the hastening tide. 
 
 And Morven said in a stern voice. "Where is the king; and 
 wherefore is he absent from his people in the hour of dread?" 
 Then the gate of the palace opened, and, behold, Siror was 
 sitting in the hall by the vast pine-tire, and his brother by 
 his side, and his chiefs around him : for they would not deign 
 to come amongst the crowd at the bidding of the herdsman's 
 son. 
 
 Then Morven, standing upon a rock above the heads of the 
 people (the same rock whereon he had proclaimed the king), 
 thus spake : — 
 
 "Ye desired to know, sons of Oestrich! wherefore the 
 river hath burst its bounds, and the peril hath come upon you. 
 Learn, then, that the stars resent as the foulest of human 
 crimes an insult to their servants and delegates below. Ye 
 are all aware of the manner of life of Morven, whom ye have 
 surnamed the Prophet! He harms not man nor beast; he 
 lives alone ; and, far from the wild joys of the warrior tribe, 
 he worships in awe and fear the Powers of Night. So is he 
 able to advise ye of the coming danger, — so is he able to save 
 ye from the foe. Thus are your huntsmen swift and your 
 warriors bold; and thus do your cattle bring forth their 
 young, and the earth its fruits. What think ye, and what 
 do ye ask to hear? Listen, men of Oestrich! — they have 
 laid snares for my life ; and there are amongst you those who 
 
160 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 have whetted the sword against the bosom that is only filled 
 with love for you all. Therefore have the stern lords of 
 heaven loosened the chains of the river; therefore doth this 
 evil menace ye. Neither will it pass away until they who 
 dug the pit for the servant of the stars are buried in the 
 same." 
 
 Then, by the red torches, the faces of the men looked fierce 
 and threatening ; and ten thousand voices shouted forth, " Name 
 them who conspired against thy life, holy prophet, and 
 surely they shall be torn limb from limb." 
 
 And Morven turned aside, and they saw that he wept bit- 
 terly; and he said, — 
 
 " Ye have asked me, and I have answered : but now scarce 
 will ye believe the foe that I have provoked against me ; and 
 by the heavens themselves I swear, that if my death would 
 satisfy their fury, nor bring down upon yourselves and your 
 children's children the anger of the throned stars, gladly 
 would I give my bosom to the knife. Yes," he cried, lifting 
 up his voice, and pointing his shadowy arm towards the hall 
 where the king sat by the pine-fire, — " yes, thou whom by my 
 voice the stars chose above thy brother; yes, Siror, the guilty 
 one! take thy sword, and come hither; strike, if thou hast 
 the heart to strike, the Prophet of the Gods! " 
 
 The king started to his feet, and the crowd were hushed in 
 a shuddering silence. 
 
 Morven resumed : — 
 
 " Know then, men of Oestrich, that Siror and Voltoch his 
 brother, and Darvan the elder of the wise men, have purposed 
 to slay your prophet, even at such hour as when alone he 
 seeks the shade of the forest to devise new benefits for you. 
 Let the king deny it, if he can! " 
 
 Then Voltoch, of the giant limbs, strode forth from the hall, 
 and his spear quivered in his hand. 
 
 " Kightly hast thou spoken, base son of my father's herds- 
 man! and for thy sins shalt thou surely die; for thou liest 
 when thou speakest of thy power with the stars, and thou 
 laughest at the folly of them who hear thee : wherefore put 
 him to death." 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 161 
 
 Then the chiefs in the hall clashed their arms, and rushed 
 forth to slay the son of Osslah. 
 
 But he, stretching his unarmed hands on high, ex- 
 claimed, "Hear him, dread ones of the night! Hark how 
 he blasphemeth ! " 
 
 Then the crowd took up the word, and cried, "He blas- 
 phemeth! he blasphemeth against the prophet!" 
 
 But the king and the chiefs, who hated Morven because of 
 his power with the people, rushed into the crowd; and the 
 crowd were irresolute, nor knew they how to act, for never 
 yet had they rebelled against their chiefs, and they feared 
 alike the prophet and the king. 
 
 And Siror cried, "Summon Darvan to us, for he hath 
 watched the steps of Morven, and he shall lift the veil from 
 my people's eyes." Then three of the swift of foot started 
 forth to the house of Darvan. 
 
 And Morven cried out with a loud voice, "Hark! thus 
 saith the star, who, now riding through yonder cloud, breaks 
 forth upon my eyes, 'For the lie that the elder hath uttered 
 against my servant, the curse of the stars shall fall upon 
 him.' Seek, and as ye find him so may ye find ever the foes 
 of Morven and the gods ! " 
 
 A chill and an icy fear fell over the crowd, and even the- 
 cheek of Siror grew pale; and Morven, erect and dark above 
 the waving torches, stood motionless with folded arms. And 
 hark! — far and fast came on the war-steeds of the wave; the- 
 people heard them marching to the land, and tossing their- 
 white manes in the roaring wind. 
 
 "Lo, as ye listen," said Morven, calmly, "the river sweeps: 
 on. Haste, for the gods will have a victim, be it your prophet 
 or your king." 
 
 " Slave ! " shouted Siror, and his spear left his hand, and 
 far above the heads of the crowd sped hissing beside the dark 
 form of Morven, and rent the trunk of the oak behind. Then 
 the people, wroth at the danger of their beloved seer, uttered 
 a wild yell, and gathered round him with brandished swords, 
 facing their chieftains and their king. But at that instant, 
 ere the war had broken forth among the tribe, the three war- 
 
 11 
 
162 THE PILGRBIS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 riors returned, and they bore Darvan on their shoulders, and 
 laid him at the feet of the king, and they said tremblingly, 
 "Thus found we the elder in the centre of his own hall." 
 And the people saw that Darvan was a corpse, and that the 
 prediction of Morven was thus verified. " So perish the ene- 
 mies of Morven and the stars ! " cried the son of Osslah. And 
 the people echoed the cry. Then the fury of Siror was at its 
 height, and waving his sword above his head he plunged into 
 the crowd, " Thy blood, baseborn, or mine ! " 
 
 "So be it!" answered Morven, quailing not. "People, 
 smite the blasphemer! Hark how the river pours down upon 
 your children and your hearths ! On, on, or ye perish ! " 
 
 And Siror fell, pierced by five hundred spears. 
 
 " Smite ! smite ! " cried Morven, as the chiefs of the royal 
 house gathered round the king. And the clash of swords, and 
 the gleam of spears, and the cries of the dying, and the yell 
 of the trampling people mingled with the roar of the elements, 
 and the voices of the rushing wave. 
 
 Three hundred of the chiefs perished that night by the 
 swords of their own tribe; and the last cry of the victors 
 was, " Morven the prophet ! Morven the king ! " 
 
 And the son of Osslah, seeing the waves now spreading over 
 the valley, led Orna his wife, and the men of Oestrich, their 
 women, and their children, to a high mount, where they 
 waited the dawning sun. But Orna sat apart and wept bit- 
 terly, for her brothers were no more, and her race had per- 
 ished from the earth. And Morven sought to comfort her in 
 vain. 
 
 When the morning rose, they saw that the river had over- 
 spread the greater part of the city, and now stayed its course 
 among the hollows of the vale. Then Morven said to the 
 people, "The star-kings are avenged, and their wrath ap- 
 peased. Tarry only here until the waters have melted into 
 the crevices of the soil." And on the fourth day they re- 
 turned to the city, and no man dared to name another, save 
 Morven, as the king. 
 
 But Morven retired into his cave and mused deeply; and 
 then assembling the people, he gave them new laws; and he 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 163 
 
 made tliem build a mighty temple in honour of the stars, and 
 made them heap within it all that the tribe held most pre- 
 cious. And he took unto him fifty children from the most 
 famous of the tribe; and he took also ten from among the 
 men who had served him best, and he ordained that they 
 should serve the stars in the great temple : and Morven was 
 their chief. And he put away the crown they pressed upon 
 him, and he chose from among the elders a new king. And 
 he ordained that henceforth the servants only of the stars in 
 the great temple should elect the king and the rulers, and 
 hold council, and proclaim war; but he suffered the king to 
 feast, and to hunt, and to make merry in the banquet-halls. 
 And Morven built altars in the temple, and was the first who, 
 in the North, sacrificed the beast and the bird, and afterwards 
 human flesh, upon the altars. And he drew auguries from the 
 entrails of the victim, and made schools for the science of the 
 prophet; and Morven's piety was the wonder of the tribe, — 
 in that he refused to be a king. And Morven the high priest 
 was ten thousand times mightier than the king. He taught 
 the people to till the ground and to sow the herb; and by his 
 wisdom, and the valour that his prophecies instilled into 
 men, he conquered all the neighbouring tribes. And the sons 
 of Oestrich spread themselves over a mighty empire, and with 
 them spread the name and the laws of Morven. And in every 
 province which he conquered, he ordered them to build a tem- 
 ple to the stars. 
 
 But a heavy sorrow fell upon the fears of Morven. The 
 sister of Siror bowed down her head, and survived not long 
 the slaughter of her race. And she left Morven childless. 
 And he mourned bitterly and as one distraught, for her only 
 in the world had his heart the power to love. And he sat 
 down and covered his face, saying : — 
 
 " Lo ! I have toiled and travailed ; and never before in the 
 world did man conquer what I have conquered. Verily the 
 empire of the iron thews and the giant limbs is no more! I 
 have founded a new power, that henceforth shall sway the 
 lands, — the empire of a plotting brain and a commanding 
 mind. But, behold! my fate is barren, and I feel already 
 
164 THE PILGRBIS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 that it will grow neither fruit nor tree as a shelter to mine 
 old age. Desolate and lonely shall I pass unto my grave. 
 Orna! my beautiful! my loved! none were like unto thee, 
 and to thy love do I owe my glory and my life ! Would for thy 
 sake, O sweet bird! that nestled in the dark cavern of my 
 heart, — would for thy sake that thy brethren had been spared, 
 for verily with my life would I have purchased thine. Alas! 
 only when I lost thee did I fiud that thy love was dearer to 
 me than the fear of others ! " And Morven mourned night 
 and day, and none might comfort him. 
 
 But from that time forth he gave himself solely up to the 
 cares of his calling; and his nature and his affections, and 
 whatever there was yet left soft in him, grew hard like stone; 
 and he was a man without love, and he forbade love and mar- 
 riage to the priest. 
 
 Now, in his latter years, there arose other prophets; for 
 the world had grown wiser even by Morven's wisdom, and 
 some did say unto themselves, "Behold Morven, the herds- 
 man's son, is a king of kings: this did the stars for their 
 servant; shall we not also be servants to the star?" 
 
 And they wore black garments like Morven, and went about 
 prophesying of what the stars foretold them. And Morven 
 was exceeding wroth; for he, more than other men, knew 
 that the prophets lied. Wherefore he went forth against 
 them with the ministers of the temple, and he took them, 
 and burned them by a slow fire; for thus said Morven to 
 the people : " A true prophet hath honour, but I only am a 
 true prophet; to all false prophets there shall be surely 
 death." 
 
 And the people applauded the piety of the son of Osslah. 
 
 And Morven educated the wisest of the children in the 
 mysteries of the temple, so that they grew up to succeed him 
 worthily. 
 
 And he died full of years and honour ; and they carved his 
 effigy on a mighty stone before the temple, and the effigy en- 
 dured for a thousand ages, and whoso looked on it trembled ; 
 for the face was calm with the calmness of unspeakable 
 awe! 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 165 
 
 And Morven was the first mortal of the North that made 
 Religion the stepping-stone to Power. Of a surety Morven 
 was a great man! 
 
 It was the last night of the old year, and the stars sat, each 
 upon his ruby throne, and watched with sleepless eyes upon 
 the world. The night was dark and troubled, the dread 
 winds were abroad, and fast and frequent hurried the clouds 
 beneath the thrones of the kings of night. And ever and 
 anon fiery meteors flashed along the depths of heaven, and 
 were again swallowed up in the grave of darkness. But far 
 below his brethren, and with a lurid haze around his orb, 
 sat the discontented star that had watched over the hunters 
 of the North. 
 
 And on the lowest abyss of space there was spread a thick 
 and mighty gloom, from which, as from a caldron, rose col- 
 umns of wreathing smoke; and still, when the great winds 
 rested for an instant on their paths, voices of woe and laugh- 
 ter, mingled with shrieks, were heard booming from the abyss 
 to the upper air. 
 
 And now, in the middest night, a vast figure rose slowly 
 from the abyss, and its wings threw blackness over the world. 
 High upward to the throne of the discontented star sailed the 
 fearful shape, and the star trembled on his throne when the 
 form stood before him face to face. 
 
 And the shape said, " Hail, brother ! all hail ! " 
 
 "I know thee not," answered the star; "thou art not the 
 archangel that visitest the kings of night." 
 
 And the shape laughed loud. "I am the fallen star of the 
 morning! I am Lucifer, thy brother! Hast thou not, 
 sullen king, served me and mine ; and hast thou not wrested 
 the earth from thy Lord who sittest above, and given it to 
 me, by darkening the souls of men with the religion of fear? 
 Wherefore come, brother, come ; thou hast a throne prepared 
 beside my own in the fiery gloom. Come ! The heavens are 
 no more for thee ! " 
 
 Then the star rose from his throne, and descended to the 
 side of Lucifer; for ever hath the spirit of discontent had 
 
166 THE PILGRIMS OF THE KHIXE. 
 
 sympathy with the soul of pride. And they sank slowly 
 down to the gulf of gloom. 
 
 It was the first night of the new year, and the stars sat 
 each on his ruby throne, and watched with sleepless eyes upon 
 the world. But sorrow dimmed the bright faces of the kings 
 of night, for they mourned in silence and in fear for a fallen 
 brother. 
 
 And the gates of the heaven of heavens flew open with a 
 golden sound, and the swift archangel fled down on his silent 
 wings ; and the archangel gave to each of the stars, as before, 
 the message of his Lord, and to each star was his appointed 
 charge. And when the heraldry seemed done there came a 
 laugh from the abyss of gloom, and half-way from the gulf 
 rose the lurid shape of Lucifer the flend! 
 
 " Thou countest thy flock ill, radiant shepherd ! Behold ! 
 one star is missing from the three thousand and ten! " 
 
 " Back to thy gulf, false Lucifer ! — the throne of thy brother 
 hath been filled." 
 
 And, lo! as the archangel spake, the stars beheld a young 
 and all-lustrous stranger on the throne of the erring star; and 
 his face was so soft to look upon that the dimmest of human 
 eyes might have gazed upon its splendour unabashed : but the 
 dark fiend alone was dazzled by its lustre, and, with a yell 
 that shook the flaming pillars of the universe, he plunged 
 backward into the gloom. 
 
 Then, far and sweet from the arch unseen, came forth the 
 voice of God, — 
 
 "Behold! on the throne of the discontented star sits the 
 star of Hope; .and he that breathed into mankind the religion 
 of Fear hath a successor in him who shall teach earth the 
 religion of Love ! " 
 
 And evermore the star of Fear dwells with Lucifer, and the 
 star of Love keeps vigil in heaven! 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 167 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 GLENHAUSEN. — THE POWER OF LOVE IN SANCTIFIED PLACES. 
 A PORTRAIT OF FREDERICK BARBAROSSA. THE AMBI- 
 TION OF MEN FINDS NO ADEQUATE SYMPATHY IN "WOMEN. 
 
 "You made me tremble for you more than once," said Ger- 
 trude to the student ; " I feared you were about to touch upon 
 ground really sacred, but your end redeemed all." 
 
 " The false religion always tries to counterfeit the garb, the 
 language, the aspect of the true," answered the German; "for 
 that reason, I purposely suffered my tale to occasion that very 
 fear and anxiety you speak of, conscious that the most scrupu- 
 lous would be contented when the whole was finished." 
 
 This German was one of a new school, of which England 
 as yet knows nothing. We shall see hereafter what it will 
 produce. 
 
 The student left them at Friedberg, and our travellers pro- 
 ceeded to Glenhausen, — a spot interesting to lovers; for here 
 Frederick the First was won by the beauty of Gela, and, in 
 the midst of an island vale, he built the Imperial Palace, in 
 honour of the lady of his love. This spot is, indeed, well 
 chosen of itself; the mountains of the Rhinegebiirg close it in 
 with the green gloom of woods and the glancing waters of the 
 Kinz. 
 
 "Still, wherever we go," said Trevylyan, "we find all tra- 
 dition is connected with love; and history, for that reason, 
 hallows less than romance." 
 
 "It is singular," said Vane, moralizing, "that love makes 
 but a small part of our actual lives, but is yet the master-key 
 to our sympathies. The hardest of us, who laugh at the pas- 
 sion when they see it palpably before them, are arrested by 
 some dim tradition of its existence in the past. It is as if 
 life had few opportunities of bringing out certain qualities 
 
168 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 within us, so tliat they always remain untold and dormant, 
 susceptible to thought, but deaf to action." 
 
 "You refine and mystify too much," said Trevylyan, smil- 
 ing; "none of us have any faculty, any passion, uncalled 
 forth, if we have really loved, though but for a day." 
 
 Gertrude smiled, and drawing her arm within his, Trevyl- 
 yan left Vane to philosophize on passion, — a fit occupation 
 for one who had never felt it. 
 
 "Here let us pause," said Trevylyan, afterwards, as they 
 visited the remains of the ancient palace, and the sun glit- 
 tered on the scene, "to recall the old chivalric day of the gal- 
 lant Barbarossa; let us suppose him commencing the last 
 great action of his life; let us picture him as setting out for 
 the Holy Land. Imagine him issuing from those walls on his 
 white charger, — his fiery eye somewhat dimmed by years, and 
 his hair blanched ; but nobler from the impress of time itself, 
 — the clang of arms ; the tramp of steeds ; banners on high ; 
 music pealing from hill to hill ; the red cross and the nodding 
 plume ; the sun, as now glancing on yonder trees ; and thence 
 reflected from the burnished arms of the Crusaders. But, 
 Gela — " 
 
 "Ah," said Gertrude, "sAe must be no more; for she would 
 have outlived her beauty, and have found that glory had now 
 no rival in his breast. Glory consoles men for the death of 
 the loved; but glory is infidelity to the living." 
 
 "Nay, not so, dearest Gertrude," said Trevylyan, quickly; 
 "for my darling dream of Fame is the hope of laying its hon- 
 ours at your feet! And if ever, in future years, I should rise 
 above the herd, I should only ask if your step were proud and 
 your heart elated." 
 
 "I was wrong," said Gertrude, with tears in her eyes; "and 
 for your sake I can be ambitious." 
 
 Perhaps there, too, she was mistaken; for one of the com- 
 mon disappointments of the heart is, that women have so 
 rarely a sympathy in our better and higher aspirings. Their 
 ambition is not for great things; they cannot understand that 
 desire "which scorns delight, and loves laborious days." If 
 they love us, they usually exact too much. They are jealous 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 169 
 
 of the ambition to which we sacrifice so largely, and which 
 divides us from them; and they leave the stern passion of 
 great minds to the only solitude which affection cannot share. 
 To aspire is to be alone ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 VIEW OF EHRENBREITSTEIN. A NEW ALARM IN GER- 
 
 TRUDE's HEALTH. TRARBACH. 
 
 Another time our travellers proceeded from Coblentz to 
 Treves, following the course of the Moselle. They stopped 
 on the opposite bank below the bridge that unites Coblentz 
 with the Petersberg, to linger over the superb view of Ehren- 
 breitstein which you may there behold. 
 
 It was one of those calm noonday scenes which impress 
 upon us their own bright and voluptuous tranquillity. There 
 stood the old herdsman leaning on his staff, and the quiet 
 cattle knee-deep in the gliding waters. Never did stream 
 more smooth and sheen than was at that hour the surface of 
 the Moselle mirror the images of the pastoral life. Beyond, 
 the darker shadows of the bridge and of the walls of Coblentz 
 fell deep over the waves, checkered by the tall sails of the 
 craft that were moored around the harbour. But clear against 
 the sun rose the spires and roofs of Coblentz, backed by many 
 a hill sloping away to the horizon. High, dark, and massive, 
 on the opposite bank, swelled the towers and rock of Ehren- 
 breitstein, — a type of that great chivalric spirit — the honour 
 that the rock arrogates for its name — which demands so many 
 sacrifices of blood and tears, but which ever creates in the 
 restless heart of man a far deeper interest than the more 
 peaceful scenes of life by which it is contrasted. There, still 
 — from the calm waters, and the abodes of common toil and 
 ordinary pleasure — turns the aspiring mind! Still as we 
 gaze on that lofty and immemorial rock we recall the famine 
 and the siege; and own that the more daring crimes of men 
 
170 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 have a strange privilege in hallowing the very spot which 
 they devastate. 
 
 Below, in green curves and mimic bays covered with her- 
 bage, the gradual banks mingled with the water; and just 
 where the bridge closed, a solitary group of trees, standing 
 dark in the thickest shadow, gave that melancholy feature to 
 the scene which resembles the one dark thought that often 
 forces itself into our sunniest hours. Their boughs stirred 
 not; no voice of birds broke the stillness of their gloomy ver- 
 dure : the eye turned from them, as from the sad moral that 
 belongs to existence. 
 
 In proceeding to Trarbach, Gertrude was seized with an- 
 other of those fainting fits which had so terrified Trevylyan 
 before; they stopped an hour or two at a little village, but 
 Gertrude rallied with such apparent rapidity, and so strongly 
 insisted on proceeding, that they reluctantly continued their 
 way. This event would have thrown a gloom over their jour- 
 ney, if Gertrude had not exerted herself to dispel the impres- 
 sion she had occasioned; and so light, so cheerful, were her 
 spirits, that for the time at least she succeeded. 
 
 They arrived at Trarbach late at noon. This now small 
 and humble town is said to have been the Thronus Bacchi of 
 the ancients. From the spot where the travellers halted to 
 take, as it were, their impression of the town, they saw be- 
 fore them the little hostelry, a poor pretender to the Thronus 
 Bacchi, with the rude sign of the Holy Mother over the door. 
 The peaked roof, the sunk window, the gray walls, checkered 
 with the rude beams of wood so common to the meaner houses 
 on the Continent, bore something of a melancholy and prepos- 
 sessing aspect. Eight above, with its Gothic windows and 
 venerable spire, rose the church of the town; and, crowning 
 the summit of a green and almost perpendicular mountain, 
 scowled the remains of one of those mighty castles which 
 make the never-failing frown on a German landscape. 
 
 The scene was one of quiet and of gloom: the exceeding 
 serenity of the day contrasted, with an almost unpleasing 
 brightness, the poverty of the town, the thinness of the 
 population, and the dreary grandeur of the ruins that over- 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 171 
 
 hung the capital of the perished race of the bold Counts of 
 Spanheim. 
 
 They passed the night at Trarbach, and continued their jour- 
 ney next day. At Treves, Gertrude was for some days seri- 
 ously ill; and when they returned to Coblentz, her disease 
 had evidently received a rapid and alarming increase. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE DOUBLE LIFE. TREVYLYAn's FATE. — SORROW THE PAR- 
 ENT OF FAME. — NIEDERLAHNSTEIN. — DREAMS. 
 
 There are two lives to each of us, gliding on at the same 
 time, scarcely connected with each other, — the life of our ac- 
 tions, the life of our minds ; the external and the inward his- 
 tory; the movements of the frame, the deep and ever-restless 
 workings of the heart ! They who have loved know that there 
 is a diary of the affections, which we might keep for years 
 without having occasion even to touch upon the exterior sur- 
 face of life, our busy occupations, the mechanical progress of 
 our existence ; yet by the last are we judged, the first is never 
 known. History reveals men's deeds, men's outward charac- 
 ter, but not themselves. There is a secret self that hath its 
 own life "rounded by a dream," unpenetrated, unguessed. 
 What passed within Trevylyan, hour after hour, as he 
 watched over the declining health of the only being in the 
 world whom his proud heart had been ever destined to love? 
 His real record of the time was marked by every cloud upon 
 Gertrude's brow, every smile of her countenance, every — the 
 faintest — alteration in her disease ; yet, to the outward seem- 
 ing, all this vast current of varying eventful emotion lay dark 
 and unconjectured. He filled up with wonted regularity the 
 colourings of existence, and smiled and moved as other men. 
 For still, in the heroism with which devotion conquers self, 
 he sought only to cheer and gladden the young heart on which 
 
172 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 he had embarked his all ; and he kept the dark tempest of his 
 anguish for the solitude of night. 
 
 That was a peculiar doom which Fate had reserved for him; 
 and casting him, in after years, on tlie great sea of public 
 strife, it seemed as if she were resolved to tear from his heart 
 all yearnings for the land. For him there was to be no green 
 or sequestered spot in the valley of household peace. His 
 bark was to know no haven, and his soul not even the desire 
 of rest. For action is that Lethe in which alone we forget 
 our former dreams, and the mind that, too stern not to wrestle 
 with its emotions, seeks to conquer regret, must leave itself 
 no leisure to look behind. Who knows what benefits to the 
 world may have sprung from the sorrows of the benefactor? 
 As the harvest that gladdens mankind in the suns of autumn 
 was called forth by the rains of spring, so the griefs of youth 
 may make the fame of maturity. 
 
 Gertrude, charmed by the beauties of the river, desired to 
 continue the voyage to Mayence. The rich Trevylyan per- 
 suaded the physician who had attended her to accompany 
 them, and they once more pursued their way along the banks 
 of the feudal Ehine. For what the Tiber is to the classic, the 
 Khine is to the chivalric age. The steep rock and the gray 
 dismantled tower, the massive and rude picturesque of the 
 feudal days, constitute the great features of the scene; and 
 you might almost fancy, as you glide along, that you are sail- 
 ing back adown the river of Time, and the monuments of the 
 pomp and power of old, rising, one after one, upon its shores ! 
 
 Vane and Du e, the physician, at the farther end of the 
 
 vessel, conversed upon stones and strata, in that singular 
 pedantry of science which strips nature to a skeleton, and 
 prowls among the dead bones of the world, unconscious of its 
 living beauty. 
 
 They left Gertrude and Trevylyan to themselves; and, 
 "bending o'er the vessel's laving side," they indulged in si- 
 lence the melancholy with which each was imbued. For Ger- 
 trude began to waken, though doubtingly and at intervals, to 
 a sense of the short span that was granted to her life; and 
 over the loveliness around her there floated that sad and in- 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 173 
 
 eFable interest Avliich springs from the presentiment of our 
 own death. They passed the rich island of Oberwerth, and 
 Hochheim, famous for its ruby grape, and saw, from his 
 mountain bed, the Lahn bear his tribute of fruits and corn 
 into the treasury of the Rhine, Proudly rose the tower of 
 Niederlahnstein, and deeply lay its shadow along the stream. 
 It was late noon ; the cattle had sought the shade from the 
 slanting sun, and, far beyond, the holy castle of Marksburg 
 raised its battlements above mountains covered with the vine. 
 On the water two boats had been drawn alongside each other ; 
 and from one, now moving to the land, the splash of oars 
 broke the general stillness of the tide. Fast by an old tower 
 the fishermen were busied in their craft, but the sound of 
 their voices did not reach the ear. It was life, but a silent 
 life, suited to the tranquillity of noon. 
 
 "There is something in travel," said Gertrude, "which con- 
 stantly, even amidst the most retired spots, impresses us with 
 the exuberance of life. We come to those quiet nooks and 
 find a race whose existence we never dreamed of. In their 
 humble path they know the same passions and tread the same 
 career as ourselves. The mountains shut them out from the 
 great world, but their village is a world in itself. And they 
 know and heed no more of the turbulent scenes of remote cities 
 than our own planet of the inhabitants of the distant stars. 
 What then is death, but the forgetfulness of some few hearts 
 added to the general unconsciousness of our existence that 
 pervades the universe? The bubble breaks in the vast desert 
 of the air without a sound." 
 
 "Why talk of death?" said Trevylyan, with a writhing 
 smile. " These sunny scenes should not call forth such mel- 
 ancholy images." 
 
 "Melancholy," repeated Gertrude, mechanically. "Yes, 
 death is indeed melancholy when we are loved ! " 
 
 They stayed a short time at Niederlahnstein, for Yane was 
 anxious to examine the minerals that the Lahn brings into 
 the Rhine ; and the sun was waning towards its close as they 
 renewed their voyage. As they sailed slowly on, Gertrude 
 said, "How like a dream is this sentiment of existence, when, 
 
174 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 without labour or motion, every change of scene is brought 
 before us ; and if I am with you, dearest, I do not feel it less 
 resembling a dream, for I have dreamed of you lately more 
 than ever; and dreams have become a part of my life itself." 
 
 "Speaking of dreams," said Trevylyan, as they pursued 
 that mysterious subject, " I once during my former residence 
 in Germany fell in with a singular enthusiast, who had taught 
 himself what he termed 'A System of Dreaming.' When he 
 first spoke to me upon it I asked him to explain what he 
 meant, which he did somewhat in the following words." 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIII. 
 
 THE LIFE OF DREAMS. 
 
 "I WAS born," said he, "with many of the sentiments of 
 the poet, but without the language to express them; my feel- 
 ings were constantly chilled by the intercourse of the actual 
 world. My family, mere Germans, dull and unimpassioned, 
 had nothing in common with me ; nor did I out of my family 
 find those with whom I could better sympathize. I was re- 
 volted by friendships, — for they were susceptible to every 
 change; I was disappointed in love, — for the truth never ap- 
 proached to my ideal. Nursed early in the lap of Romance, 
 enamoured of the wild and the adventurous, the common- 
 places of life were to me inexpressibly tame and joyless. 
 And yet indolence, which belongs to the poetical character, 
 was more inviting than that eager and uncontemplative action 
 which can alone wring enterprise from life. Meditation was 
 my natural element. I loved to spend the noon reclined by 
 some shady stream, and in a half sleep to shape images from 
 the glancing sunbeams. A dim and unreal order of philoso- 
 phy, that belongs to our nation, was my favourite intellectual 
 pursuit; and I sought amongst the Obscure and the Recondite 
 the variety and emotion I could not find in the Familiar. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 175 
 
 Thus constantly watching the operations of the inner mind, it 
 occurred to me at last that sleep having its own world, but as 
 yet a rude and fragmentary one, it might be possible to shape 
 from its chaos all those combinations of beauty, of power, of 
 glory, and of love, which were denied to me in the world in 
 which my frame walked and had its being. So soon as this 
 idea came upon me, I nursed and cherished and mused over 
 it, till I found that the imagination began to effect the miracle 
 I desired. By brooding ardently, intensely, before I retired 
 to rest, over any especial train of thought, over any ideal 
 creations; by keeping the body utterly still and quiescent 
 during the whole day; by shutting out all living adventure, 
 the memory of which might perplex and interfere with the 
 stream of events that I desired to pour forth into the wilds 
 of sleep, I discovered at last that I could lead in dreams a life 
 solely their own, and utterly distinct from the life of day. 
 Towers and palaces, all my heritage and seigneury, rose be- 
 fore me from the depths of night; I quaffed from jewelled 
 cups the Falernian of imperial vaults; music from harps of 
 celestial tone filled up the crevices of air; and the smiles of 
 immortal beauty flushed like sunlight over all. Thus the 
 adventure and the glory that I could not for my waking life 
 obtain, was obtained for me in sleep. I wandered with the 
 gryphon and the gnome; I sounded the horn at enchanted 
 portals; I conquered in the knightly lists; I planted my 
 standard over battlements huge as the painter's birth of 
 Babylon itself. 
 
 "But I was afraid to call forth one shape on whose loveli- 
 ness to pour all the hidden passion of my soul. I trembled 
 lest my sleep should present me some image which it could 
 never restore, and, waking from which, even the new world 
 I had created might be left desolate forever. I shuddered 
 lest I should adore a vision which the first ray of morning 
 could smite to the grave. 
 
 " In this train of mind I began to wonder whether it might 
 not be possible to connect dreams together; to supply the thread 
 that was wanting; to make one night continue the history of 
 the other, so as to bring together the same shapes and the same 
 
176 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 scenes, aud thus lead a connected and harmonious life, not 
 only in the one half of existence, but in the other, the richer 
 and more glorious half. No sooner did this idea present it- 
 self to me, than I burned to accomplish it. I had before 
 taught myself that Faith is the great creator; that to believe 
 fervently is to make belief true. So I would not suffer my 
 mind to doubt the practicability of its scheme. I shut myself 
 up then entirely by day, refused books, and hated the very 
 sun, and compelled all my thoughts (and sleep is the mirror 
 of thought) to glide in one direction, — the direction of my 
 dreams, — so that from night to night the imagination might 
 keep up the thread of action, and I might thus lie down full 
 of the past dream and confident of the sequel. Not for one 
 day only, or for one month, did I pursue this system, but I 
 continued it zealously and sternly till at length it began to 
 succeed. Who shall tell," cried the enthusiast, — I see him 
 now with his deep, bright, sunken eyes, and his wild hair 
 thrown backward from his brow, — "the rapture I experi- 
 enced, when first, faintly and half distinct, I perceived the 
 harmony I had invoked dawn upon my dreams? At first there 
 was only a partial and desultory connection between them; 
 my eye recognized certain shapes, my ear certain tones com- 
 mon to each; by degrees these augmented in number, and 
 were more defined in outline. At length one fair face broke 
 forth from among the ruder forms, and night after night ap- 
 peared mixing with them for a moment and then vanishing, 
 just as the mariner watches, in a clouded sky, the moon shin- 
 ing through the drifting rack, and quickly gone. My cu- 
 riosity was now vividly excited; the face, with its lustrous 
 eyes and seraph features, roused all the emotions that no liv- 
 ing shape had called forth. I became enamoured of a dream, 
 and as the statue to the Cyprian was my creation to me ; so 
 from this intent and unceasing passion I at length worked out 
 my reward. My dream became more palpable; I spoke with 
 it; I knelt to it; my lips were pressed to its own; we ex- 
 changed the vows of love, and morning only separated us with 
 the certainty that at night we should meet again. Thus then," 
 continued my visionary, " I commenced a history utterly sepa- 
 
THE riLGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 177 
 
 rate from the history of the workl, and it went on alternately 
 with my harsh and chilling history of the day, equally regular 
 and equally continuous. And what, you ask, was that his- 
 tory? Methought I was a prince in some Eastern island that 
 had no features in common with the colder north of my native 
 home. By day I looked upon the dull walls of a German 
 town, and saw homely or squalid forms passing before me; 
 the sky was dim and the sun cheerless. Night came on with 
 her thousand stars, and brought me the dews of sleep. Then 
 suddenly there was a new world ; the richest fruits hung from 
 the trees in clusters of gold and purple. Palaces of the quaint 
 fashion of the sunnier climes, with spiral minarets and glit- 
 tering cupolas, were mirrored upon vast lakes sheltered by 
 the palm-tree and banana. The sun seemed a different orb, 
 so mellow and gorgeous were his beams; birds and winged 
 things of all hues fluttered in the shining air; the faces and 
 garments of men were not of the northern regions of the 
 world, and their voices spoke a tongue which, strange at first, 
 by degrees I interpreted. Sometimes I made war upon neigh- 
 bouring kings ; sometimes I chased the spotted pard through 
 the vast gloom of immemorial forests; my life was at once a 
 life of enterprise and pomp. But above all there was the his- 
 tory of my love ! I thought there were a thousand difficulties 
 in the way of attaining its possession. Many were the rocks 
 I had to scale, and the battles to wage, and the fortresses to 
 storm, in order to win her as my bride. But at last " (con- 
 tinued the enthusiast), "she is won, she is my own! Time 
 in that wild world, which I visit nightly, passes not so slowly 
 as in this, and yet an hour may be the same as a year. This 
 continuity of existence, this successive series of dreams, so 
 different from the broken incoherence of other men's sleep, 
 at times bewilders me with strange and suspicious thoughts. 
 What if this glorious sleep be a real life, and this dull waking 
 the true repose? Why not? What is there more faithful in 
 the one than in the other? And there have I garnered and 
 collected all of pleasure that I am capable of feeling. I seek 
 no joy in this world; I form no ties, I feast not, nor love, nor 
 make merry; I am only impatient till the hour when I may 
 
 12 
 
178 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 re-enter my royal realms and pour my renewed delight into 
 tlie bosom of my bright Ideal. There then have I found all 
 that the world denied me ; there have I realized the yearning 
 and the aspiration within me; there have I coined the untold 
 poetry into the Felt, the Seen ! " 
 
 I found, continued Trevylyan, that this tale was corrobo- 
 rated by inquiry into the visionary's habits. He shunned 
 society; avoided all unnecessary movement or excitement, 
 lie fared with rigid abstemiousness, and only appeared to feel 
 pleasure as the day departed, and the hour of return to his 
 imaginary kingdom approached. He always retired to rest 
 punctually at a certain hour, and would sleep so soundly that 
 a cannon iired under his window would not arouse him. He 
 never, which may seem singular, spoke or moved much in his- 
 sleep, but was peculiarly calm, almost to the appearance of 
 lifelessness; but, discovering once that he had been watched 
 in sleep, he was wont afterwards carefully to secure the cham- 
 ber from intrusion. His victory over the natural incoherence 
 of sleep had, when I first knew him, lasted for some years; 
 possibly what imagination first produced was afterAvards con- 
 tinued by habit. 
 
 I saw him again a few months subsequent to this confes- 
 sion, and he seemed to me much changed. His health was 
 broken, and his abstraction had deepened into gloom. 
 
 I questioned him of the cause of the alteration, and he an- 
 swered me with great reluctance, — 
 
 "She is dead," said he; "my realms are desolate! A ser- 
 pent stung her, and she died in these very arms. Vainly, 
 when I started from my sleep in horror and despair, vainly 
 did I say to myself, — This is but a dream. I shall see her 
 again. A vision cannot die! Hath it flesh that decays; is it 
 not a spirit, — bodiless, indissoluble? With what terrible 
 anxiety I awaited the night! Again I slept, and the dream 
 lay again before me, dead and withered. Even the ideal can 
 vanish. I assisted in the burial; I laid her in the earth; I 
 heaped the monumental mockery over her form. And never 
 since hath she, or aught like her, revisited my dreams. I see 
 her only when I wake; thus to wake is indeed to dream! 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 179 
 
 But," continued the visionary in a solemn voice, *'I feel my- 
 self departing from this world, and with a fearful joy; for I 
 think there may be a land beyond even the land of sleep 
 where I shall see her again, — a land in which a vision itself 
 may be restored." 
 
 And in truth, concluded Trevylyan, the dreamer died shortly 
 afterwards, suddenly, and in his sleep. And never before, 
 perhaps, had Fate so literally made of a living man (with his 
 passions and his powers, his ambition and his love) the play- 
 thing and puppet of a dream ! 
 
 "Ah," said Vane, who had heard the latter part of Trevyl- 
 yan's story, "could the German have bequeathed to us his 
 secret, what a refuge should we possess from the ills of earth ! 
 The dungeon and disease, poverty, affliction, shame, would 
 cease to be the tyrants of our lot ; and to Sleep we should con- 
 fine our history and transfer our emotions." 
 
 "Gertrude," whispered the lover, "what his kingdom and 
 his bride were to the Dreamer art thou to me ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE BROTHERS. 
 
 The banks of the Rhine now shelved away into sweeping 
 plains, and on their right rose the once imperial city of Bop- 
 part. In no journey of similar length do you meet with such 
 striking instances of the mutability and shifts of power. To 
 find, as in the Memphian Egypt, a city sunk into a heap of 
 desolate ruins; the hum, the roar, the mart of nations, hushed 
 into the silence of ancestral tombs, is less humbling to our 
 human vanity than to mark, as along the Rhine, the kingly 
 city dwindled into the humble town or the dreary village, — 
 decay without its grandeur, change without the awe of its soli- 
 tude! On the site on which Drusus raised his Roman tower, 
 and the kings of the Franks their palaces, trade now dribbles 
 
180 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 in tobacco-pipes, and transforms into an excellent cotton fac- 
 tory the antique nunnery of Konigsberg! So be it; it is the 
 progressive order of things, — the world itself will soon be 
 one excellent cotton factory! 
 
 "Look," said Trevylyan, as they sailed on, "at yonder 
 mountain, with its two traditionary Castles of Liebenstein 
 and Sternfels." 
 
 Massive and huge the ruins swelled above the green rock, 
 at the foot of which lay, in happier security from time and 
 change, the clustered cottages of the peasant, with a single 
 spire rising above the quiet village. 
 
 " Is there not, Albert, a celebrated legend attached to those 
 castles?" said Gertrude. "I think I remember to have heard 
 their names in connection with your profession of taleteller." 
 
 "Yes," said Trevylyan, "the story relates to the last lords 
 of those shattered towers, and — " 
 
 "You will sit here, nearer to me, and begin," interrupted 
 Gertrude, in her tone of childlike command. "Come." 
 
 THE BROTHERS. 
 
 A TALE.l 
 
 You must imagine then, dear Gertrude (said Trevylyan), a 
 beautiful summer day, and by the same faculty that none pos- 
 sess so richly as yourself, for it is you who can kindle some- 
 thing of that divine spark even in me, you must rebuild those 
 shattered towers in the pomp of old; raise the gallery and the 
 hall ; man the battlements with warders, and give the proud 
 banners of ancestral chivalry to wave upon the walls. But 
 above, sloping half down the rock, you must fancy the hang- 
 ing gardens of Liebenstein, fragrant with flowers, and bask- 
 ing in the noonday sun. 
 
 On the greenest turf, underneath an oak, there sat three 
 persons, in the bloom of youth. Two of the three were 
 brothers; the third was an orphan girl, whom the lord of the 
 opposite tower of Sternfels had bequeathed to the protection 
 
 1 This tale is, in reality, founded on the beautiful tradition which belongs 
 to Liebenstein and Sternfels. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 181 
 
 of his brother, the chief of Liebenstein. The castle itself and 
 the demesne that belonged to it passed away from the female 
 line, and became the heritage of Otho, the orphan's cousin, 
 and the younger of the two brothers now seated on the turf. 
 
 "And oh," said the elder, whose name was \Yarbeck, "you 
 have twined a chaplet for my brother; have you not, dearest 
 Leoline, a simple flower for me? " 
 
 The beautiful orphan (for beautiful she was, Gertrude, as 
 the heroine of the tale you bid me tell ought to be, — should 
 she not have to the dreams of my fancy your lustrous hair, 
 and your sweet smile, and your eyes of blue, that are never, 
 never silent? Ah, pardon me, that in a former tale, I denied 
 the heroine the beauty of your face, and remember that to 
 atone for it, I endowed her with the beauty of your mind) — 
 the beautiful orphan blushed to her temples, and culling from 
 the flowers in her lap the freshest of the roses, began weaving 
 them into a wreath for Warbeck, 
 
 "It would be better," said the gay Otho, "to make ray sober 
 brother a chaplet of the rue and cypress ; the rose is much too 
 bright a flower for so serious a knight." 
 
 Leoline held up her hand reprovingly. 
 
 "Let him laugh, dearest cousin," said Warbeck, gazing 
 passionately on her changing cheek ; " and thou, Leoline, be- 
 lieve that the silent stream runs the deepest." 
 
 At this moment, they heard the voice of the old chief, their 
 father, calling aloud for Leoline; for ever when he returned 
 from the chase he wanted her gentle presence; and the hall 
 was solitary to him if the light sound of her step and the 
 music of her voice were not heard in welcome. 
 
 Leoline hastened to her guardian, and the brothers were 
 left alone. 
 
 Nothing could b3 more dissimilar than the features and the 
 respective characters of Otho and Warbeck. Otho's counte- 
 nance was flushed with the brown hues of health; his eyes 
 were of the brightest hazel : his dark hair wreathed in short 
 curls round his open and fearless brow ; the jest ever echoed 
 on his lips, and his step was bounding as the foot of the 
 hunter of the Alps. Bold and light was his spirit ; if at times 
 
182 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 he betrayed the haughty insolence of youth, he felt gener- 
 ously, and though not ever ready to confess sorrow for a fault, 
 he was at least ready to brave peril for a friend. 
 
 But Warbeck's frame, though of equal strength, was more 
 slender in its proportions than that of his brother; the fair 
 long hair that characterized his northern race hung on either 
 side of a countenance calm and pale, and deeply impressed 
 with thought, even to sadness. His features, more majestic 
 and regular than Otho's, rarely varied in their expression. 
 More resolute even than Otho, he was less impetuous; more 
 impassioned, he was also less capricious. 
 
 The brothers remained silent after Leoline had left them. 
 Otho carelessly braced on his sword, that he had laid aside on 
 the grass; but Warbeck gathered up the flowers that had been 
 touched by the soft hand of Leoline, and placed them in his 
 bosom. 
 
 The action disturbed Otho; he bit his lip, and changed 
 colour; at length he said, with a forced laugh, — 
 
 " It must be confessed, brother, that you carry 3'our affec- 
 tion for our fair cousin to a degree that even relationship 
 seems scarcely to warrant." 
 
 "It is true," said Warbeck, calmly; "I love her with a love 
 surpassing that of blood." 
 
 " How ! " said Otho, fiercely : " do you dare to think of 
 Leoline as a bride? " 
 
 "Dare!" repeated Warbeck, turning yet paler than his 
 wonted hue. 
 
 " Yes, I have said the word ! Know, "Warbeck, that I, too, 
 love Leoline ; I, too, claim her as my bride ; and never, while 
 I can wield a sword, never, while I wear the spurs of knight- 
 hood, will I render my claim to a living rival, — even," he 
 added, sinking his voice, "though that rival be my brother! " 
 
 Warbeck answered not; his very soul seemed stunned; he 
 gazed long and wistfully on his brother, and then, turning his 
 face away, ascended the rock without uttering a single word. 
 
 This silence startled Otho. Accustomed to vent every emo- 
 tion of his own, he could not comprehend the forbearance of 
 his brother; he knew his high and brave nature too well to 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 183 
 
 imagine that it arose from fear. Might it not be contempt, 
 or might he not, at this moment, intend to seek their father; 
 and, the first to proclaim his love for the orphan, advance, 
 also, the privilege of the elder born? As these suspicions 
 flashed across him, the haughty Otho strode to his brother's 
 side, and laying his hand on his arm, said, — 
 
 "Whither goest thou; and dost thou consent to surrender 
 Leoline? " 
 
 "Does she love thee, Otho?" answered Warbeck, breaking 
 silence at last; and his voice spoke so deep an anguish, that 
 it arrested the passions of Otho even at their height. 
 
 "It is thou who art now silent," continued Warbeck; 
 "speak. Doth she love thee, and has her lip confessed it? " 
 
 "I have believed that she loved me," faltered Otho; "but 
 she is of maiden bearing, and her lip, at least, has never 
 told it." 
 
 "Enough," said Warbeck; "release your hold." 
 
 "Stay," said Otho, his suspicions returning; "stay, — yet 
 one word; dost thou seek my father? He ever honoured thee 
 more than me : wilt thou own to him thy love, and insist on 
 thy right of birth? By my soul and my hope of heaven, do 
 it, and one of us two must fall ! " 
 
 "Poor boy! " answered Warbeck, bitterly; "how little thou 
 canst read the heart of one who loves truly! Thinkest thou I 
 would wed her if she loved thee? Thinkest thou I could, 
 even to be blessed myself, give her one moment's pain? Out 
 on the thought ! away ! " 
 
 "Then wilt not thou seek our father?" said Otho, abashed. 
 
 "Our father! — has our father the keeping of Leoline's af- 
 fection?" answered Warbeck; and shaking off his brother's 
 grasp, he sought the way to the castle. 
 
 As he entered the hall, he heard the voice of Leoline; she 
 was singing to the old chief one of the simple ballads of the 
 time that the warrior and the hunter loved to hear. He 
 paused lest he should break the spell (a spell stronger than a 
 sorcerer's to him), and gazing upon Leoline's beautiful form, 
 his heart sank within him. His brother and himself had 
 each that day, as they sat in the gardens, given her a flower; 
 
184 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 his flower was tlie fresher and the rarer ; his he saw not, but 
 she wore his brother's in her bosom ! 
 
 The chief, lulled by the music and wearied with the toils 
 of the chase, sank into sleep as the song ended, and Warbeck, 
 coming forward, motioned to Leoline to follow him. He 
 passed into a retired and solitary walk, and when they were 
 a little distance from the castle, Warbeck turned round, and 
 taking Leoline's hand gently, said, — 
 
 *'Let us rest here for one moment, dearest cousin; I have 
 much on my heart to say to thee." 
 
 "And what is there," answered Leoline, as they sat on a 
 mossy bank, with the broad Rhine glancing below, " what is 
 there that my kind Warbeck would ask of me? Ah, would it 
 might be some favour, something in poor Leoline's power to 
 grant; for ever from my birth you have been to me most ten- 
 der, most kind. You, I have often heard them say, taught 
 my first steps to walk ; you formed my infant lips into lan- 
 guage, and, in after years, when my wild cousin was far away 
 in the forests at the chase, you would brave his gay jest and 
 remain at home, lest Leoline should be weary in the solitude. 
 Ah, would I could repay you ! " 
 
 Warbeck turned away his cheek; his heart was very full, 
 and it was some moments before he summoned courage to 
 reply. 
 
 "My fair cousin," said he, "those were happy days; but 
 they were the days of childhood. New cares and new thoughts 
 have now come on us ; but I am still thy friend, Leoline, and 
 still thou wilt confide in me thy young sorrows and thy young 
 hopes, as thou ever didst. Wilt thou not, Leoline? " 
 
 "Canst thou ask me?" said Leoline; and Warbeck, gazing 
 on her face, saw that though her eyes were full of tears, they 
 yet looked steadily upon his ; and he knew that she loved him 
 only as a sister. 
 
 He sighed, and paused again ere he resumed. "Enough," 
 said he; "now to my task. Once on a time, dear cousin, 
 there lived among these mountains a certain chief who had 
 two sons, and an orphan like thyself dwelt also in his halls. 
 And the elder son — but no matter, let us not waste words on 
 
THE riLGRIMS OF THE TtinXE. 185 
 
 jiim ! — the younger son, then, loved the orphan dearly, — 
 more dearly than cousins love; and fearful of refusal, he 
 prayed the elder one to urge his suit to the orphan. Leoline, 
 my tale is done. Canst thou not love Otho as he loves 
 thee?" 
 
 And now lifting his eyes to Leoline, he saw that she trem- 
 bled violently, and her cheek was covered with blushes. 
 
 "Say," continued he, mastering himself, " is not that flower 
 — his present — a token that he is chiefly in thy thoughts?" 
 
 "Ah, Warbeck! do not deem me ungrateful that I wear not 
 yours also ; but — " 
 
 " Hush I " said Warbeck, hastily ; " I am but as thy brother ; 
 is not Otho more? He is young, brave, and beautiful. God 
 grant that he may deserve thee, if thou givest him so rich a 
 gift as thy affections ! " 
 
 "I saw less of Otho in my childhood," said Leoline, eva- 
 sively; "therefore, his kindness of late years seemed stranger 
 to me than thine." 
 
 "And thou wilt not then reject him? Thou wilt be his 
 bride? " 
 
 "And thy sister," answered Leoline, 
 
 "Bless thee, mine own dear cousin! one brother's kiss then, 
 and farewell! Otho shall thank thee for himself." 
 
 He kissed her forehead calmly, and, turning away, plunged 
 into the thicket; then, nor till then, he gave vent to such emo- 
 tions as, had Leoline seen them, Otho's suit had been lost for- 
 ever; for passionately, deeply as in her fond and innocent 
 heart she loved Otho, the happiness of Warbeck was not less 
 dear to her. 
 
 When the young knight had recovered his self-possession 
 he went in search of Otho. He found him alone in the wood, 
 leaning with folded arms against a tree, and gazing moodily 
 on the ground. Warbeck's noble heart was touched at his 
 brother's dejection. 
 
 "Cheer thee, Otho," said he; "I bring thee no bad tidings; 
 I have seen Leoline, I have conversed with her — nay, start 
 not, — she loves thee! she is thine!" 
 
 " Generous, generous Warbeck ! " exclaimed Otho ; and he 
 
186 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 threw himself on his brother's neck. "Xo, no," said he, "this 
 must not be; thou hast the elder claim, — I resign her to thee. 
 Forgive me my waywardness, brother, forgive me ! " 
 
 "Think of the past no more," said Warbeck; "the love of 
 Leoline is an excuse for greater offences than thine. And 
 now, be kind to her; her nature is soft and keen. / know her 
 well ; for / have studied her faintest wish. Thou art hasty 
 and quick of ire; but remember that a word wounds where 
 love is deep. For my sake, as for hers, think more of her 
 happiness than thine own; now seek her, — she waits to hear 
 from thy lips the tale that sounded cold upon mine." 
 
 With that he left his brother, and, once more re-entering 
 the castle, he went into the hall of his ancestors. His father 
 still slept; he put his hand on his gray hair, and blessed him; 
 then stealing up to his chamber, he braced on his helm and 
 armour, and thrice kissing the hilt of his sword, said, with a 
 flushed cheek, — 
 
 " Henceforth be thou my bride ! " Then passing from the 
 castle, he sped by the most solitary paths down the rock, 
 gained the Ehine, and hailing one of the numerous fishermen 
 of the river, won the opposite shore ; and alone, but not sad, 
 for his high heart supported him, and Leoline at least was 
 happy, he hastened to Frankfort. 
 
 The town was all gayety and life, arms clanged at every 
 corner, the sounds of martial music, the wave of banners, the 
 glittering of plumed casques, the neighing of war-steeds, all 
 united to stir the blood and inflame the sense. Saint Bertrand 
 had lifted the sacred cross along the shores of the Rhine, and 
 the streets of Frankfort witnessed with what success! 
 
 On that same day Warbeck assumed the sacred badge, and 
 was enlisted among the knights of the Emperor Conrad. 
 
 We must suppose some time to have elapsed, and Otho and 
 Leoline were not yet wedded; for, in the first fervour of his 
 gratitude to his brother, Otho had proclaimed to his father 
 and to Leoline the conquest Warbeck had obtained over him- 
 self; and Leoline, touched to the heart, would not consent 
 that the wedding should take place immediately. " Let him, 
 at least," said she, "not be insulted by a premature festivity; 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 187 
 
 and give him time, amongst the lofty beauties he will gaze 
 upon in a far country, to forget, Otho, that he once loved 
 her who is the beloved of thee," 
 
 The old chief applauded this delicacy; and even Otho, in 
 the first flush of his feelings towards his brother, did not ven- 
 ture to oppose it. They settled, then, that the marriage 
 should take place at the end of a year. 
 
 Months rolled away, and an absent and moody gloom settled 
 upon Otho's brow. In his excursions with his gay companions 
 among the neighbouring towns, he heard of nothing but the 
 glory of the Crusaders, of the homage paid to the heroes of the 
 Cross at the courts they visited, of the adventures of their 
 life, and the exciting spirit that animated their war. In fact, 
 neither minstrel nor priest suffered the theme to grow cold; 
 and the fame of those who had gone forth to the holy strife 
 gave at once emulation and discontent to the youths who re- 
 mained behind. 
 
 "And my brother enjoys this ardent and glorious life," said 
 the impatient Otho; "while I, whose arm is as strong, and 
 whose heart is as bold, languish here listening to the dull 
 tales of a hoary sire and the silly songs of an orphan girl." 
 His heart smote him at the last sentence, but he had already 
 begun to weary of the gentle love of Leoline. Perhaps when 
 he had no longer to gain a triumph over a rival the excite- 
 ment palled; or perhaps his proud spirit secretly chafed at 
 being conquered by his brother in generosity, even when out- 
 shining him in the success of love. 
 
 But poor Leoline, once taught that she was to consider Otho 
 her betrothed, surrendered her heart entirely to his control. 
 His wild spirit, his dark beauty, his daring valour, won 
 while they awed her; and in the titfuluess of his nature were 
 those perpetual springs of hope and fear that are the foun- 
 tains of ever-agitated love. She saw with increasing grief 
 the change that was growing over Otho's mind; nor did 
 she divine the cause. "Surely I have not offended him?" 
 thought she. 
 
 Among the companions of Otho was one who possessed a 
 singular sway over him. He was a knight of that mysterious 
 
188 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 Order of the Temple, which exercised at one time so great a 
 command over the minds of men. 
 
 A severe and dangerous wound in a brawl with an English 
 knight had confined the Templar at Frankfort, and prevented 
 his joining the Crusade. During his slow recovery he had 
 formed an intimacy with Otho, and, taking up his residence 
 at the castle of Liebenstein, had been struck with the beauty 
 of Leoline. Prevented by his oath from marriage, he allowed 
 himself a double license in love, and doubted not, could he 
 disengage the young knight from his betrothed, that she would 
 add a new conquest to the many he had already achieved. 
 Artfully therefore he painted to Otho the various attractions 
 of the Holy Cause; and, above all, he failed not to describe, 
 with glowing colours, the beauties who, in the gorgeous East, 
 distinguished with a prodigal favour the warriors of the Cross. 
 Dowries, unknown in the more sterile mountains of the Rhine, 
 accompanied the hand of these beauteous maidens ; and even 
 a prince's daughter was not deemed, he said, too lofty a mar- 
 riage for the heroes who might win kingdoms for themselves. 
 
 "To me," said the Templar, "such hopes are eternally de- 
 nied. But you, were you not already betrothed, what for- 
 tunes might await you!" 
 
 By such discourses the ambition of Otho was perpetually 
 aroused; they served to deepen his discontent at his present 
 obscurity, and to convert to distaste the only solace it afforded 
 in the innocence and affection of Leoline. 
 
 One night, a minstrel sought shelter from the storm in the 
 halls of Liebenstein. His visit was welcomed by the chief, 
 and he repaid the hospitality he had received by the exercise 
 of his art. He sang of the chase, and the gaunt hound started 
 from the hearth. He sang of love, and Otho, forgetting his 
 restless dreams, approached to Leoline, and laid himself at 
 her feet. Louder then and louder rose the strain. The min- 
 strel sang of war; he painted the feats of the Crusaders; he 
 plunged into the thickest of the battle; the steed neighed; 
 the trump sovinded; and you might have heard the ringing of 
 the steel. But when he came to signalize the names of the 
 boldest knights, high among the loftiest sounded the name of 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 189 
 
 Sir Warbeck of Liebenstein. Thrice had he saved the impe- 
 rial banner; two chargers slain beneath him, he had covered 
 their bodies with the fiercest of the foe. 
 
 Gentle in the tent and terrible in the fray, the minstrel 
 should forget his craft ere the Rhine should forget its hero. 
 The chief started from his seat. Leoline clasped the min- 
 strel's hand. 
 
 "Speak, — you have seen him, he lives, he is honoured?" 
 
 " I myself am but just from Palestine, brave chief and noble 
 maiden. I saw the gallant knight of Liebenstein at the right 
 hand of the imperial Conrad. And he, ladye, was the only 
 knight whom admiration shone upon without envy, its shadow. 
 Who then," continued the minstrel, once more striking his 
 harp, "who then would remain inglorious in the hall? Shall 
 not the banners of his sires reproach him as they wave; and 
 shall not every voice from Palestine strike shame into his 
 soul? " 
 
 " Eight ! " cried Otho, suddenly, and flinging himself at the 
 feet of his father. " Thou hearest what my brother has done, 
 and thine aged eyes weep tears of joy. Shall / only dishonour 
 thine old age with a rusted sword? No! grant me, like my 
 brother, to go forth with the heroes of the Cross ! " 
 
 " ISToble youth, " cried the harper, "therein speaks the soul 
 of Sir Warbeck; hear him, sir knight, — hear the noble 
 youth." 
 
 "Heaven cries aloud in his voice," said the Templar, 
 solemnly. 
 
 "My son, I cannot chide thine ardour," said the old chief, 
 raising him with trembling hands; "but Leoline, thy 
 betrothed?" 
 
 Pale as a statue, with ears that doubted their sense as they 
 drank in the cruel words of her lover, stood the orphan. She 
 did not speak, she scarcely breathed; she sank into her seat, 
 and gazed upon the ground, till, at the speech of the chief 
 both maiden pride and maiden tenderness restored her con- 
 sciousness, and she said, — 
 
 "/, uncle! Shall /bid Otho stay when his wishes bid him 
 depart? " 
 
190 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 "He will return to thee, noble ladye, covered "with glory," 
 said the harper : but Otho said no more. The touching voice 
 of Leoline went to his soul; he resumed his seat in silence; and 
 Leoline, going up to him, whispered gently, "Act as though I 
 were not; " and left the hall to commune with her heart and 
 to weep alone. 
 
 "I can wed her before I go," said Otho, suddenly, as he sat 
 that night in the Templar's chamber. 
 
 " Why, that is true ! and leave thy bride in the first week, 
 — a hard trial ! " 
 
 "Better than incur the chance of never calling her mine. 
 Dear, kind, beloved Leoline!" 
 
 "Assuredly, she deserves all from thee; and, indeed, it is 
 no small sacrifice, at thy years and with thy mien, to renounce 
 forever all interest among the noble maidens thou wilt visit. 
 Ah, from the galleries of Constantinople what eyes will look 
 down on thee, and what ears, learning that thou art Otho the 
 bridegroom, will turn away, caring for thee no more! A 
 bridegroom without a bride! Nay, man, much as the Cross 
 wants warriors, I am enough thy friend to tell thee, if thou 
 weddest, to stay peaceably at home, and forget in the chase 
 the labours of war, from which thou wouldst strip the ambi- 
 tion of love." 
 
 "I would I knew what were best," said Otho, irresolutely. 
 "My brother — ha, shall he forever excel me? But Leoline, 
 how will she grieve, — she who left him for me!" 
 
 "Was that thy fault?" said the Templar, gayly. "It 
 may many times chance to thee again to be preferred to 
 another. Troth, it is a sin under which the conscience may 
 walk lightly enough. But sleep on it, Otho; my eyes grow- 
 heavy." 
 
 The next day Otho sought Leoline, and proposed to her that 
 their wedding should precede his parting; but so embarrassed 
 was he, so divided between two wishes, that Leoline, offended, 
 hurt, stung by his coldness, refused the proposal at once. 
 She left him lest he should see her weep, and then — then she 
 repented even of her just pride ! 
 
 But Otho, striving to appease his conscience with the belief 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 191 
 
 that hers now was the sole fault, busied himself in prepara- 
 tions for his departure. Anxious to outshine his brother, he 
 departed not as Warbeck, alone and unattended, but levying 
 all the horse, men, and money that his domain of Sternfels — 
 which he had not yet tenanted — would aiford, he repaired to 
 Frankfort at the head of a glittering troop. 
 
 The Templar, aifecting a relapse, tarried behind, and prom- 
 ised to join him at that Constantinople of which he had so 
 loudly boasted. Meanwhile he devoted his whole powers of 
 pleasing to console the unhappy orphan. The force of her 
 simple love was, however, stronger than all his arts. In vain 
 he insinuated doubts of Otho, — she refused to hear them; in 
 vain he poured with the softest accents into her ear the witch- 
 ery of flattery and song, — she turned heedlessly away; and 
 only pained by the courtesies that had so little resemblance to 
 Otho, she shut herself up in her chamber, and pined in soli- 
 tude for her forsaker. 
 
 The Templar now resolved to attempt darker arts to obtain 
 power over her, when, fortunately, he was summoned suddenly 
 away by a mission from the Grand Master of so high import, 
 that it could not be resisted by a passion stronger in his breast 
 than love, — the passion of ambition. He left the castle to its 
 solitude; and Otho peopling it no more with his gay compan- 
 ions, no solitude could be more unfrequently disturbed. 
 
 Meanwhile, though, ever and anon, the fame of Warbeck 
 reached their ears, it came unaccompanied with that of Otho, 
 — of him they had no tidings; and thus the love of the tender 
 orphan was kept alive by the perpetual restlessness of fear. 
 At length the old chief died, and Leoline was left utterly 
 alone. 
 
 One evening as she sat with her maidens in the hall, the 
 ringing of a steed's hoofs was heard in the outer court; a horn 
 sounded, the heavy gates were unbarred, and a knight of a 
 stately mien and covered with the mantle of the Cross entered 
 the hall. He stopped for one moment at the entrance, as if 
 overpowered by his emotion; in the next he had clasped Leo- 
 line to his breast. 
 
 "Dost thou not recognize thy cousin Warbeck? " He doffed 
 
192 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 his casque, and she saw that majestic brow which, unlike 
 Otho's, had never changed or been clouded in its aspect to 
 her. 
 
 " The war is suspended for the present," said he. " I learned 
 my father's death, and I have returned home to hang up my 
 banner in the hall and spend my days in peace." 
 
 Time and the life of camps had worked their change upon 
 Warbeck's face; the fair hair, deepened in its shade, was worn 
 from the temples, and disclosed one scar that rather aided the 
 beauty of a countenance that had always something high and 
 martial in its character; but the calm it had once worn had 
 settled down into sadness; he conversed more rarely than be- 
 fore, and though he smiled not less often, nor less kindly, the 
 smile had more of thought, and the kindness had forgot its 
 passion. He had apparently conquered a love that was so 
 early crossed, but not that fidelity of remembrance which 
 made Leoline dearer to him than all others, and forbade him 
 to replace the images he had graven upon his soul. 
 
 The orphan's lips trembled with the name of Otho, but a 
 certain recollection stifled even her anxiety. Warbeck has- 
 tened to forestall her questions. Otho was well, he said, and 
 sojourning at Constantinople; he had lingered there so long 
 that the crusade had terminated without his aid: doubtless 
 now he would speedily return, — a month, a week, nay, a day, 
 might restore him to her side. 
 
 Leoline was inexpressibly consoled, yet something remained 
 untold. Why, so eager for the strife of the sacred tomb, had 
 he thus tarried at Constantinople? She wondered, she wearied 
 conjecture, but she did not dare to search further. 
 
 The generous Warbeck concealed from her that Otho led a 
 life of the most reckless and indolent dissipation, — wasting 
 his wealth in the pleasures of the Greek court, and only occu- 
 pying his ambition with the wild schemes of founding a prin- 
 cipality in those foreign climes, which the enterprises of the 
 Norman adventurers had rendered so alluring to the knightly 
 bandits of the age. 
 
 The cousins resumed their old friendship, and Warbeck be- 
 lieved that it was friendship alone. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 193 
 
 They walked again among the gardens in which their child- 
 hood had strayed; they sat again on the green turf whereon 
 they had woven flowers; they looked down on the eternal 
 mirror of the Rhine, — ah! could it have reflected the same 
 unawakened freshness of their life's early spring! 
 
 The grave and contemplative mind of Warbeck had not been 
 so contented with the honours of war but that it had sought 
 also those calmer sources of emotion which were yet found 
 among the sages of the East. He had drunk at the fountain 
 of the wisdom of those distant climes, and had acquired the 
 habits of meditation which were indulged by those wiser 
 tribes from which the Crusaders brought back to the North 
 the knowledge that was destined to enlighten their posterity. 
 Warbeck, therefore, had little in common with the ruder 
 chiefs around; he did not summon them to his board, nor at- 
 tend attheir noisy wassails. Often late at night, in yon shat- 
 tered tower, his lonely lamp shone still over the mighty 
 stream, and his only relief to loneliness was in the presence 
 and the song of his soft cousin. 
 
 Mouths rolled on, when suddenly a vague and fearful ru- 
 mour reached the castle of Liebenstein. Otho was returning 
 home to the neighbouring tower of Sternfels ; but not alone. 
 He brought back with him a Greek bride of surprising beauty, 
 and dowered with almost regal wealth. Leoline was the first 
 to discredit the rumour; Leoline was soon the only one who 
 disbelieved. 
 
 Bright in the summer noon flashed the array of horsemen ; 
 far up the steep ascent wound the gorgeous cavalcade; the 
 lonely towers of Liebenstein heard the echo of many a laugh 
 and peal of merriment. Otho bore home his bride to the hall 
 of Sternfels. 
 
 That night there was a great banquet in Otho's castle; the 
 lights shone from every casement, and music swelled loud and 
 ceaselessly within. 
 
 By the side of Otho, glittering with the prodigal jewels of 
 the East, sat the Greek. Her dark locks, her flashing eye, 
 the false colours of her complexion, dazzled the eyes of her 
 guests. On her left hand sat the Templar. 
 
 13 
 
194 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 "By the holy rood," quoth the Templar, gayly, though he 
 crossed himself as he spoke, " we shall scare the owls to-night 
 on those grim towers of Liebenstein. Thy grave brother, Sir 
 Otho, will have much to do to comfort his cousin when she sees 
 what a gallant life she would have led with thee." 
 
 "Poor damsel! " said the Greek, with affected pity, "doubt- 
 less she will now be reconciled to the rejected one. I hear he 
 is a knight of a comely mien." 
 
 "Peace! " said Otho, sternly, and quafiBing a large goblet of 
 wine. 
 
 The Greek bit her lip, and glanced meaningly at the Tem- 
 plar, who returned the glance. 
 
 "Nought but a beauty such as thine can win my pardon," 
 said Otho, turning to his bride, and gazing passionately in 
 her face. 
 
 The Greek smiled. 
 
 Well sped the feast, the laugh deepened, the wine circled, 
 when Otho's eye rested on a guest at the bottom of the board, 
 whose figure was mantled from head to foot, and whose face 
 was covered by a dark veil. 
 
 "Beshrew me!" said he, aloud, "but this is scarce cour- 
 teous at our revel: will the stranger vouchsafe to unmask?" 
 
 These words turned all eyes to the figure, and they who sat 
 next it perceived that it trembled violently; at length it rose, 
 and walking slowly, but with grace, to the fair Greek, it laid 
 beside her a wreath of flowers. 
 
 "It is a simple gift, ladye," said the stranger, in a voice of 
 such sweetness that the rudest guest was touched by it; "but 
 it is all I can offer, and the bride of Otho should not be with- 
 out a gift at my hands. May ye both be happy! " 
 
 With these words, the stranger turned and passed from the 
 hall silent as a shadow. 
 
 "Bring back the stranger! " cried the Greek, recovering her 
 surprise. Twenty guests sprang up to obey her mandate. 
 
 "No, no! " said Otho, waving his hand impatiently. "Touch 
 her not, heed her not, at your peril." 
 
 The Greek bent over the flowers to conceal her anger, and 
 from amongst them dropped the broken half of a ring. Otho 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 195 
 
 recognized it at once; it was the broken half of that ring 
 which he had broken with his betrothed. Alas! he required 
 not such a sign to convince him that that figure, so full of 
 ineffable grace, that touching voice, that simple action so ten- 
 der in its sentiment, that gift, that blessing, came only from 
 the forsaken and forgiving Leoline. 
 
 But Warbeck, alone in his solitary tower, paced to and fro 
 with agitated steps. Deep, undying wrath at his brother's 
 falsehood mingled with one burning, one delicious hope. He 
 confessed now that he had deceived himself when he thought 
 his passion was no more; was there any longer a bar to his 
 union with Leoline? 
 
 In that delicacy which was breathed into him by his love, 
 he had forborne to seek, or to offer her the insult of consola- 
 tion. He felt that the shock should be borne alone, and yet 
 he pined, he thirsted, to throw himself at her feet. 
 
 Nursing these contending thoughts, he was aroused by a 
 knock at his door; he opened it. The passage was thronged 
 by Leoline's maidens, pale, anxious, weeping. Leoline had 
 left the castle, with but one female attendant, none knew 
 whither; they knew too soon. From the hall of Sternfels she 
 had passed over in the dark and inclement night to the valley 
 in which the convent of Bornhofen offered to the weary of 
 spirit and the broken of heart a refuge at the shrine of God. 
 
 At daybreak the next morning, Warbeck was at the con- 
 vent's gate. He saw Leoline. What a change one night of 
 suffering had made in that face, which was the fountain of all 
 loveliness to him! He clasped her in his arms; he wept; he 
 urged all that love could urge : he besought her to accept that 
 heart which had never wronged her memory by a thought. 
 " Oh, Leoline ! didst thou not say once that these arms nursed 
 thy childhood; that this voice soothed thine early sorrows? 
 Ah, trust to them again and forever. From a love that for- 
 sook thee turn to the love that never swerved." 
 
 "No," said Leoline; "no. What would the chivalry of 
 which thou art the boast, — what would they say of thee, wert 
 thou to wed one affianced and deserted, who tarried years for 
 another, and brought to thine arms only that heart which he 
 
196 THE PILGRBIS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 had abandoned? No; and even if thou, as I know thou 
 wouldst be, wert callous to such wrong of thy high name, 
 shall I bring to thee a broken heart and bruised spirit? Shalt 
 thou wed sorrow and not joy; and shall sighs that will not 
 cease, and tears that may not be dried, be the only dowry of 
 thy bride? Thou, too, for whom all blessings should be or- 
 dained! No, forget me; forget thy poor Leoline! She hath 
 nothing but prayers for thee." 
 
 In vain Warbeck pleaded; in vain he urged all that passion 
 and truth could urge ; the springs of earthly love were forever 
 dried up in the orphan's heart, and her resolution was im- 
 movable. She tore herself from his arms, and the gate of the 
 convent creaked harshly on his ear. 
 
 A new and stern emotion now wholly possessed him; though 
 naturally mild and gentle, he cherished anger, when once it 
 was aroused, with the strength of a calm mind. Leoline's 
 tears, her sufferings, her wrongs, her uncomplaining spirit, 
 the change already stamped upon her face,— all cried aloud 
 to him for vengeance. "She is an orphan," said he, bitterly; 
 " she hath none to protect, to redress her, save me alone. My 
 father's charge over her forlorn youth descends of right to 
 me. What matters it whether her forsaker be my brother? 
 He is her foe. Hath he not crushed her heart? Hath he not 
 consigned her to sorrow till the grave? And with what in- 
 sult! no warning, no excuse; with lewd wassailers keeping 
 revel for his new bridals in the hearing — before the sight — 
 of his betrothed! Enough! the time hath come when, to use 
 his own words, 'One of us two must fall!' " He half drew his 
 sword as he spoke, and thrusting it back violently into the 
 sheath, strode home to his solitary castle. The sound of 
 steeds and of the hunting horn met him at his portal; the 
 bridal train of Sternfels, all mirth and gladness, were parting 
 for the chase. 
 
 That evening a knight in complete armour entered the ban- 
 quet-hall of Sternfels, and defied Otho, on the part of War- 
 beck of Liebenstein, to mortal combat. 
 
 Even the Templar was startled by so unnatural a challenge; 
 but Otho, reddening, took up the gage, and the day and spot 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 197 
 
 were fixed. Discontented, wroth with himself, a savage glad- 
 ness seized him; he longed to wreak his desperate feelings 
 even on his brother. Nor had he ever in his jealous heart 
 forgiven that brother his virtues and his renown. 
 
 At the appointed hour the brothers met as foes. Warbeck's 
 vizor was up, and all the settled sternness of his soul was 
 stamped upon his brow. But Otho, more willing to brave the 
 arm than to face the front of his brother, kept his vizor 
 down; the Templar stood by him with folded arms. It was 
 a study in human passions to his mocking mind. Scarce had 
 the first trump sounded to this dread conflict, when a new 
 actor entered on the scene. The rumour of so unprecedented 
 an event had not failed to reach the convent of Bornhofen ; 
 and now, two by two, came the sisters of the holy shrine, and 
 the armed men made way, as with trailing garments and veiled 
 faces they swept along into the very lists. At that moment one 
 from amongst them left her sisters with a slow majestic pace, 
 and paused not till she stood right between the brother foes. 
 
 *' Warbeck," she said in a hollow voice, that curdled up his 
 dark spirit as it spoke, "is it thus thou wouldst prove thy 
 love, and maintain thy trust over the fatherless orphan whom 
 thy sire bequeathed to thy care? Shall I have murder on my 
 soul? " At that question she paused, and those who heard it 
 were struck dumb, and shuddered. " The murder of one man 
 by the hand of his own brother! Away, Warbeck! / 
 command. " 
 
 "Shall I forget thy wrongs, Leoline? " said Warbeck. 
 
 "Wrongs! they united me to God! they are forgiven, they 
 are no more. Earth has deserted me, but Heaven hath taken 
 me to its arms. Shall I murmur at the change? And thou, 
 Otho " — here her voice faltered — " thou, does thy conscience 
 smite thee not? Wouldst thou atone for robbing me of hope 
 by barring against me the future? Wretch that I should be, 
 could I dream of mercy, could I dream of comfort, if thy 
 brother fell by thy sword in my cause? Otho, I have par- 
 doned thee, and blessed thee and thine. Once, perhaps, thou 
 didst love me; remember how I loved thee, — cast down thine 
 arms." 
 
198 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 Otho gazed at the veiled form before him. Where had the 
 soft Leoline learned to command? He turned to his brother; 
 he felt all that he had inflicted upon both; and casting his 
 sword upon the ground, he knelt at the feet of Leoline, and 
 kissed her garment with a devotion that votary never lavished 
 on a holier saint. 
 
 The spell that lay over the warriors around was broken; 
 there was one loud cry of congratulation and joy. "And 
 thou, Warbeck? " said Leoline, turning to the spot where, 
 still motionless and haughty, Warbeck stood. 
 
 "Have I ever rebelled against thy will?" said he, softly; 
 and buried the point of his sword in the earth. " Yet, Leo- 
 line, yet," added he, looking at his kneeling brother, "yet art 
 thou already better avenged than by this steel ! " 
 
 "Thou art! thou art! " cried Otho, smiting his breast; and 
 slowly, and scarce noting the crowd that fell back from his 
 path, Warbeck left the lists. 
 
 Leoline said no more; her divine errand was fulfilled. She 
 looked long and wistfully after the stately form of the knight 
 of Liebenstein, and then, with a slight sigh, she turned to 
 Otho, " This is the last time we shall meet on earth. Peace 
 be with us all ! " 
 
 She then, with the same majestic and collected bearing, 
 passed on towards the sisterhood; and as, in the same solemn 
 procession, they glided back towards the convent, there was 
 not a man present — no, not even the hardened Templar — 
 who would not, like Otho, have bent his knee to Leoline. 
 
 Once more Otho plunged into the wild revelry of the age; 
 his castle was thronged with guests, and night after night the 
 lighted halls shone down athwart the tranquil Rhine. The 
 beauty of the Greek, the wealth of Otho, the fame of the 
 Templar, attracted all the chivalry from far and near. Never 
 had the banks of the Rhine known so hospitable a lord as the 
 knight of Sternfels. Yet gloom seized him in the midst of 
 gladness, and the revel was welcome only as the escape from 
 remorse. The voice of scandal, however, soon began to min- 
 gle with that of envy at the pomp of Otho. The fair Greek, 
 it was said, weary of her lord, lavished her smiles on others; 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 199 
 
 the young and the fair were always most acceptable at the 
 castle; and, above all, her guilty love for the Templar scarcely 
 affected disguise. Otho alone appeared unconscious of the 
 rumour; and though he had begun to neglect his bride, he 
 relaxed not in his intimacy with the Templar. 
 
 It was noon, and the Greek was sitting in her bower alone 
 with her suspected lover; the rich perfumes of the East min- 
 gled with the fragrance of flowers, and various luxuries, un- 
 known till then in those northern shores, gave a soft and 
 effeminate character to the room. 
 
 "I tell thee," said the Greek, petulantly, "that he begins 
 to suspect; that I have seen him watch thee, and mutter as 
 he watched, and play with the hilt of his dagger. Better let 
 us fly ere it is too late, for his vengeance would be terrible 
 were it once roused against us. Ah, why did I ever forsake 
 my own sweet land for these barbarous shores ! There, love 
 is not considered eternal, nor inconstancy a crime worthy 
 death." 
 
 "Peace, pretty one!" said the Templar, carelessly; "thou 
 knowest not the laws of our foolish chivalry. Thinkest thou 
 I could fly from a knight's halls like a thief in the night? 
 Why, verily, even the red cross would not cover such dis- 
 honour. If thou fearest that thy dull lord suspects, let us 
 part. The emperor hath sent to me from Frankfort. Ere 
 evening I might be on my way thither." 
 
 "And I left to brave the barbarian's revenge alone? Is this 
 thy chivalry? " 
 
 " Nay, prate not so wildly," answered the Templar. " Surely, 
 when the object of his suspicion is gone, thy woman's art and 
 thy Greek wiles can easily allay the jealous fiend. Do I not 
 know thee, Glycera? Why, thou wouldst fool all men — save 
 a Templar." 
 
 "And thou, cruel, wouldst thou leave me?" said the Greek, 
 weeping. "How shall I live without thee? " 
 
 The Templar laughed slightly. " Can such eyes ever weep 
 without a comforter? But farewell; I must not be found with 
 thee. To-morrow I depart for Frankfort; we shall meet 
 again." 
 
200 THE PILGRBIS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 As soon as the door closed on the Templar, the Greek rose, 
 and pacing the room, said, "Selfish, selfish! how could I ever 
 trust him? Yet I dare not brave Otho alone. Surely it was 
 his step that disturbed us in our yesterday's interview? Nay, 
 I will fly. I can never want a companion." 
 
 She clapped her hands; a young page appeared; she threw 
 herself on her seat and wept bitterly. 
 
 The page approached, and love was mingled with his 
 compassion. 
 
 "Why weepest thou, dearest lady?" said he. "Is there 
 aught in which Conrad's services — services ! — ah, thou hast 
 read his heart — his devotion may avail? " 
 
 Otho had wandered out the whole day alone; his vassals 
 had observed that his brow was more gloomy than its wont, 
 for he usually concealed whatever might prey within. Some 
 of the most confidential of his servitors he had conferred with, 
 and the conference had deepened the shadow of his coun- 
 tenance. He returned at twilight; the Greek did not honour 
 the repast with her presence. She was unwell, and not to be 
 disturbed. The gay Templar was the life of the board. 
 
 "Thou carriest a sad brow to-day, Sir Otho," said he; "good 
 faith, thou hast caught it from the air of Liebenstein." 
 
 "I have something troubles me," answered Otho, forcing a 
 smile, "which I would fain impart to thy friendly bosom. 
 The night is clear and the moon is up, let us forth alone into 
 the garden." 
 
 The Templar rose, and he forgot not to gird on his sword 
 as he followed the knight. 
 
 Otho led the way to one of the most distant terraces that 
 overhung the Rhine. 
 
 "Sir Templar," said he, pausing, "answer me one question 
 on thy knightly honour. Was it thy s,tep that left my lady's 
 bower yester-eve at vesper? " 
 
 Startled by so sudden a query, the wily Templar faltered 
 in his reply. 
 
 The red blood mounted to Otho's brow. "Nay, lie not, sir 
 knight; these eyes, thanks to God! have not witnessed, but 
 these ears have heard from others of my dishonour." 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 201 
 
 As Otho spoke, the Templar's eye resting on the water per- 
 ceived a boat rowing fast over the Rhine; the distance for- 
 bade him to see more than the outline of two figures within 
 it. "She was right," thought he; "perhaps that boat already 
 bears her from the danger." 
 
 Drawing himself up to the full height of his tall stature, 
 the Templar replied haughtily, — 
 
 " Sir Otho of Sternfels, if thou hast deigned to question thy 
 vassals, obtain from them only an answer. It is not to con- 
 tradict such minions that the knights of the Temple pledge 
 their word! " 
 
 "Enough," cried Otho, losing patience, and striking the 
 Templar with his clenched hand. "Draw, traitor, draw! " 
 
 Alone in his lofty tower Warbeck watched the night deepen 
 over the heavens, and communed mournfully with himself. 
 "To what end," thought he, "have these strong affections, 
 these capacities of love, this yearning after sympathy, been 
 given me? Unloved and unknown I walk to my grave, and 
 all the nobler mysteries of my heart are forever to be untold. " 
 
 Thus musing, he heard not the challenge of the warder on 
 the wall, or the unbarring of the gate below, or the tread of 
 footsteps along the winding stair; the door was thrown sud- 
 denly open, and Otho stood before him. "Come," he said, 
 in a low voice trembling with passion; "come, I will show 
 thee that which shall glad thine heart. Twofold is Leoline 
 avenged." 
 
 Warbeck looked in amazement on a brother he had not met 
 since they stood in arms each against the other's life, and he 
 now saw that the arm that Otho extended to him dripped with 
 blood, trickling drop by drop upon the floor. 
 
 "Come," said Otho, "follow me; it is my last prayer. 
 Come, for Leoline's sake, come." 
 
 At that name Warbeck hesitated no longer; he girded on 
 his sword, and followed his brother down the stairs and 
 through the castle gate. The porter scarcely believed his 
 eyes when he saw the two brothers, so long divided, go forth 
 at that hour alone, and seemingly in friendship. 
 
 Warbeck, arrived at that epoch in the feelings when noth- 
 
202 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 ing stuns, followed with silent steps the rapid strides of his 
 brother. The two castles, as you are aware, are scarce a 
 stone's throw from each other. In a few minutes Otho 
 paused at an open space in one of the terraces of Sternfels, 
 on which the moon shone bright and steady. "Behold!" he 
 said, in a ghastly voice, *' behold!" and Warbeck saw on the 
 sward the corpse of the Templar, bathed with the blood that 
 even still poured fast and warm from his heart. 
 
 "Hark! " said Otho. "He it was who first made me waver 
 in my vows to Leoline ; he persuaded me to wed yon whited 
 falsehood. Hark! he, who had thus wronged my real love, 
 dishonoured me with my faithless bride, and thus — thus — 
 thus " — as grinding his teeth, he spurned again and again 
 the dead body of the Templar — "thus Leoline and myself are 
 avenged! " 
 
 "And thy wife? " said Warbeck, pityingly. 
 
 "Fled, — fled with a hireling page. It is well! she was not 
 worth the sword that was once belted on — by Leoline." 
 
 The tradition, dear Gertrude, proceeds to tell us that Otho, 
 though often menaced by the rude justice of the day for the 
 death of the Templar, defied and escaped the menace. On the 
 very night of his revenge a long and delirious illness seized 
 him; the generous Warbeck forgave, forgot all, save that he 
 had been once consecrated by Leoline's love. He tended him 
 through his sickness, and when he recovered, Otho was an 
 altered man. He forswore the comrades he had once courted, 
 the revels he had once led. The halls of Sternfels were deso- 
 late as those of Liebenstein. The only companion Otho sought 
 was Warbeck, and Warbeck bore with him. They had no 
 topic in common, for on one subject Warbeck at least felt too 
 deeply ever to trust himself to speak ; yet did a strange and 
 secret sympathy re-unite them. They had at least a common 
 sorrow; often they were seen wandering together by the soli- 
 tary banks of the river, or amidst the woods, without appar- 
 ently interchanging word or sign. Otho died first, and still 
 in the prime of youth; and Warbeck was now left companion- 
 less. In vain the imperial court wooed him to its pleasures ; 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 203 
 
 in vain the camp proffered him the oblivion of renown. Ah ! 
 could he tear himself from a spot where morning and night 
 he could see afar, amidst the valley, the roof that sheltered 
 Leoline, and on which every copse, every turf, reminded him 
 of former days? His solitary life, his midnight vigils, strange 
 scrolls about his chamber, obtained him by degrees the repute 
 of cultivating the darker arts; and shunning, he became 
 shunned by all. But still it was sweet to hear from time to 
 time of the increasing sanctity of her in whom he had treas- 
 ured up his last thoughts of earth. She it was who healed 
 the sick; she it was who relieved the poor; and the supersti- 
 tion of that age brought pilgrims from afar to the altars that 
 she served. 
 
 ]Many years afterwards, a band of lawless robbers, who ever 
 and anon broke from their mountain fastnesses to pillage and 
 to desolate the valleys of the Rhine, — who spared neither sex 
 nor age, neither tower nor hut, nor even the houses of God 
 Himself, — laid waste the territories round Bornhofen, and de- 
 manded treasure from the convent. The abbess, of the bold 
 lineage of Rudesheim, refused the sacrilegious demand. The 
 convent was stormed; its vassals resisted; the robbers, inured 
 to slaughter, won the day; already the gates were forced, 
 when a knight, at the head of a small but hardy troop, rushed 
 down from the mountain side and turned the tide of the fray. 
 Wherever his sword flashed fell a foe; wherever his war-cry 
 sounded was a space of dead men in the thick of the battle. 
 The fight was won, the convent saved; the abbess and the 
 sisterhood came forth to bless their deliverer. Laid under an 
 aged oak, he was bleeding fast to death ; his head was bare 
 and his locks were gray, but scarcely yet with years. One 
 only of the sisterhood recognized that majestic face; one 
 bathed his parched lips; one held his dying hand; and in 
 Leoline's presence passed away the faithful spirit of the last 
 lord of Liebenstein ! 
 
 "Oh! " said Gertrude, through her tears; "surely you must 
 have altered the facts, — surely — surely — it must have been 
 impossible for Leoline, with a woman's heart, to have loved 
 Otho more than Warbeck? " 
 
204 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 " My child, " said Vane, " so think women when they read a 
 tale of love, and see the whole heart bared before them; but 
 not so act they in real life, when they see only the surface of 
 character, and pierce not its depths — until it is too late ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. — A COMMON INCIDENT 
 NOT BEFORE DESCRIBED. TREVYLYAN AND GERTRUDE. 
 
 The day now grew cool as it waned to its decline, and the 
 breeze came sharp upon the delicate frame of the sufferer. 
 They resolved to proceed no farther; and as they carried 
 with them attendants and baggage, which rendered their 
 route almost independent of the ordinary accommodation, they 
 steered for the opposite shore, and landed at a village beauti- 
 fully sequestered in a valley, and where they fortunately 
 obtained a lodging not often met with in the regions of the 
 picturesque. 
 
 When Gertrude, at an early hour, retired to bed, Vane and 
 
 Du e fell into speculative conversation upon the nature of 
 
 man. Vane's philosophy was of a quiet and passive scepti- 
 cism; the physician dared more boldly, and rushed from doubt 
 to negation. The attention of Trevylyan, as he sat apart and 
 musing, was arrested in despite of himself. He listened to 
 an argument in which he took no share, but which suddenly 
 inspired him with an interest in that awful subject which, in 
 the heat of youth and the occupations of the world, had never 
 been so prominently called forth before. 
 
 "What," thought he, with unutterable anguish, as he lis- 
 tened to the earnest vehemence of the Frenchman and the 
 tranquil assent of Vane, "if this creed were indeed true, — 
 if there be no other world, — Gertrude is lost to me eternally, 
 through the dread gloom of death there would break forth no 
 star!" 
 
THE PILGRBIS OF THE RHINE. 205 
 
 That is a peculiar incident that perhaps occurs to us all at 
 times, but which I have never found expressed in books, — 
 namely, to hear a doubt of futurity at the very moment in 
 which the present is most overcast; and to find at once this 
 world stripped of its delusion and the next of its consolation. 
 It is perhaps for others, rather than ourselves, that the fond 
 heart requires a Hereafter. The tranquil rest, the shadow, 
 and the silence, the mere pause of the wheel of life, have no 
 terror for the wise, who know the due value of the world. 
 
 " After the billows of a stormy sea, 
 Sweet is at last the haven of repose ! " 
 
 But not so when that stillness is to divide us eternally from 
 others; when those we have loved with all the passion, the 
 devotion, the watchful sanctity of the weak human heart, are 
 to exist to us no more! when, after long years of desertion 
 and widowhood on earth, there is to be no hope of reunion in 
 that Invisible beyond the stars ; when the torch, not of life 
 only, but of love, is to be quenched in the Dark Fountain, 
 and the grave, that we would fain hope is the great restorer 
 of broken ties, is but the dumb seal of hopeless, utter, inexor- 
 able separation ! And it is this thought, this sentiment, which 
 makes religion out of woe, and teaches belief to the mourning 
 heart that in the gladness of united affections felt not the ne- 
 cessity of a heaven ! To how many is the death of the beloved 
 the parent of faith ! 
 
 Stung by his thoughts, Trevylyan rose abruptly, and steal- 
 ing from the lowly hostelry, walked forth amidst the serene 
 and deepening night; from the window of Gertrude's room 
 the light streamed calm on the purple air. 
 
 With uneven steps and many a pause, he paced to and fro 
 beneath the window, and gave the rein to his thoughts. How 
 intensely he felt the all that Gertrude was to him! how bit- 
 terly he foresaw the change in his lot and character that her 
 death would work out! For who that met him in later years 
 ever dreamed that emotions so soft, and yet so ardent, had 
 visited one so stern? Who could have believed that time was 
 when the polished and cold Trevylyan had kept the vigils he 
 
206 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 now held below the chamber of one so little like himself as 
 Gertrude, in that remote and solitary hamlet, shut in by the 
 haunted mountains of the Rhine, and beneath the moonlight 
 of the romantic North? 
 
 While thus engaged, the light in Gertrude's room was sud- 
 denly extinguished ; it is impossible to express how much that 
 trivial incident affected him ! It was like an emblem of what 
 was to come; the light had been the only evidence of life that 
 broke upon that hour, and he was now left alone with the 
 shades of night. Was not this like the herald of Gertrude's 
 own death; the extinction of the only living ray that broke 
 upon the darkness of the world? 
 
 His anguish, his presentiment of utter desolation, increased. 
 He groaned aloud; he dashed his clenched hand to his breast; 
 large and cold drops of agony stole down his brow. "Father," 
 he exclaimed with a struggling voice, " let this cup pass from 
 me ! Smite my ambition to the root ; curse me with poverty, 
 shame, and bodily disease ; but leave me this one solace, this 
 one companion of my fate ! " 
 
 At this moment Gertrude's window opened gently, and he 
 heard accents steal soothingly upon his ear. 
 
 " Is not that your voice, Albert? " said she, softly. " I heard 
 it just as I lay down to rest, and could not sleep while you 
 were thus exposed to the damp night air. You do not answer; 
 surely it is your voice: when did I mistake it for another's? " 
 
 Mastering with a violent effort his emotions, Trevylyan an- 
 swered, with a sort of convulsive gayety, — 
 
 " Why come to these shores, dear Gertrude, unless you are 
 honoured with the chivalry that belongs to them? What 
 wind, what blight, can harm me while within the circle of 
 your presence; and what sleep can bring me dreams so dear 
 as the waking thought of you? " 
 
 "It is cold," said Gertrude, shivering; "come in, dear 
 Albert, I beseech you, and I will thank you to-morrow." 
 Gertrude's voice was choked by the hectic cough, that went 
 like an arrow to Trevylyan's heart; and he felt that in her 
 anxiety for him she was now exposing her own frame to the 
 unwholesome nigfht. 
 
THE riLGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 207 
 
 He spoke no more, but hurried within the house; and when 
 the gray light of morn broke upon his gloomy features, hag- 
 gard from the want of sleep, it might have seemed, in that 
 dim eye and fast-sinking cheek, as if the lovers were not to 
 be divided — even by death itself. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 IN WHICH THE READER WILL LEARIST HOW THE FAIRIES WERE 
 RECEIVED BY THE SOVEREIGNS OF THE MINES. THE COM- 
 PLAINT OF THE LAST OF THE FAUNS. — THE RED HUNTS- 
 MAN. THE STORM. — DEATH. 
 
 In the deep valley of Ehrenthal, the metal kings — the 
 Prince of the Silver Palaces, the Gnome Monarch of the dull 
 Lead Mine, the President of the Copper United States — held 
 a court to receive the fairy wanderers from the island of 
 Nonnewerth. 
 
 The prince was there, in a gallant hunting-suit of oak 
 leaves, in honour to England; and wore a profusion of fairy 
 orders, which had been instituted from time to time, in honour 
 of the human poets that had celebrated the spiritual and ethe- 
 real tribes. Chief of these, sweet Dreamer of the "Midsum- 
 mer Night's Dream," was the badge crystallized from the 
 dews that rose above the whispering reeds of Avon on the 
 night of thy birth, — the great epoch of the intellectual world! 
 Nor wert thou, beloved Musaeus! nor thou, dim-dreaming 
 Tieck! nor were ye, the wild imaginer of the bright-haired 
 Undine, and the wayward spirit that invoked for the gloomy 
 Manfred the Witch of the breathless Alps and the spirits of 
 earth and air! — nor were ye Avithout the honours of fairy 
 homage! Your memory may fade from the heart of man, 
 and the spells of new enchanters may succeed to the charm 
 you once wove over the face of the common world ; but still 
 in the green knolls of the haunted valley and the deep shade 
 
208 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 of forests, and the starred palaces of air, ye are honoured by 
 the beings of your dreams, as demigods and kings! Your 
 graves are tended by invisible hands, and the places of your 
 birth are hallowed by no perishable worship! 
 
 Even as I write, ^ far away amidst the hills of Scotland, and 
 by the forest thou hast clothed with immortal verdure, thou, 
 the maker of "the Harp by lone Glenfillan's spring," art pass- 
 ing from the earth which thou hast " painted with delight. " 
 And such are the chances of mortal fame, our children's 
 children may raise new idols on the site of thy holy altar, 
 and cavil where their sires adored; but for thee the mermaid 
 of the ocean shall wail in her coral caves, and the sprite that 
 lives in the waterfalls shall mourn ! Strange shapes shall hew 
 thy monument in the recesses of the lonely rocks! ever by 
 moonlight shall the fairies pause from their roundel when 
 some wild note of their minstrelsy reminds them of thine 
 own, — ceasing from their revelries, to weep for the silence of 
 that mighty lyre, which breathed alike a revelation of the 
 mysteries of spirits and of men! 
 
 The King of the Silver Mines sat in a cavern in the valley, 
 through which the moonlight pierced its way and slept in 
 shadow on the soil shining with metals wrought into unnum- 
 bered shapes; and below him, on a humbler throne, with a 
 gray beard and downcast eye, sat the aged King of the Dwarfs 
 that preside over the dull realms of lead, and inspire the verse 
 
 of , and the prose of ! And there too a fantastic 
 
 household elf was the President of the Copper Eepublie, — a 
 spirit that loves economy and the Uses, and smiles sparely on 
 the Beautiful. But, in the centre of the cave, upon beds of 
 the softest mosses, the untrodden growth of ages, reclined the 
 fairy visitors, Nymphalin seated by her betrothed. And round 
 the walls of the cave were dwarf attendants on the sovereigns 
 of the metals, of a thousand odd shapes and fantastic gar- 
 ments. On the abrupt ledges of the rocks the bats, charmed 
 to stillness but not sleep, clustered thickly, watching the scene 
 with fixed and amazed eyes ; and one old gray owl, the f avour- 
 
 1 It was just at the time the author was finishing this work that the great 
 master of his art was drawing to the close of his career. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 209 
 
 ite of the witch of the valley, sat blinking in a corner, listen- 
 ing with all her might that she might bring home the scandal 
 to her mistress. 
 
 "And tell me, Prince of the Khine-Island Fays," said the 
 King of the Silver Mines, "for thou art a traveller, and a 
 fairy that hath seen much, how go men's affairs in the upper 
 world? As to ourself, we live here in a stupid splendour, 
 and only hear the news of the day when our brother of lead 
 pajs a visit to the English printing-press, or the President of 
 Copper goes to look at his improvements in steam-engines." 
 
 "Indeed," replied Fayzenheim, preparing to speak like 
 JEneas in the Carthaginian court, — "indeed, your Majesty, I 
 know not much that will interest you in the present aspect of 
 mortal affairs, except that you are quite as much honoured at 
 this day as when the Roman conqueror bent his knee to you 
 among the mountains of Taunus ; and a vast number of little 
 round subjects of yours are constantly carried about by the 
 rich, and pined after with hopeless adoration by the poor. 
 But, begging your Majesty's pardon, may I ask what has be- 
 come of your cousin, the King of the Golden Mines? I know 
 very well that he has no dominion in these valleys, and do 
 not therefore wonder at his absence from your court this 
 night; but I see so little of his subjects on earth that I should 
 fear his empire was well nigh at an end, if I did not recognize 
 everywhere the most servile homage paid to a power now be- 
 come almost invisible." 
 
 The King of the Silver Mines fetched a deep sigh. "Alas, 
 prince," said he, "too well do you divine the expiration of my 
 cousin's empire. So many of his subjects have from time to 
 time gone forth to the world, pressed into military service and 
 never returning, that his kingdom is nearly depopulated. And 
 he lives far off in the distant parts of the earth, in a state of 
 melancholy seclusion; the age of gold has passed, the age of 
 paper has commenced." 
 
 "Paper," said Nymphalin, who was still somewhat of a 
 pr/cieuse, — "paper is a wonderful thing. What pretty books 
 the human people write upon it! " 
 
 "Ah! that 's what I design to convey," said the silver king. 
 
 14 
 
210 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 "It is the age less of paper money than paper government: 
 the Press is the true bank." The lord treasurer of the Eng- 
 lish fairies pricked up his ears at the word "bank;" for he 
 was the Attwood of the fairies: he had a favourite plan of 
 making money out of bulrushes, and had written four large 
 bees '-wings full upon the true nature of capital. 
 
 While they were thus conversing, a sudden sound as of some 
 rustic and rude music broke along the air, and closing its wild 
 burden, they heard the following song : — 
 
 THE COMPLAINT OF THE LAST FAUN. 
 
 The moon on the Latmos mountain 
 
 Her pining vigil keeps ; 
 And ever the silver fouutain 
 
 In the Dorian valley weeps. 
 But gone are Endymion's dreams ; 
 
 And the crystal lymph 
 
 Bewails the nymph 
 Whose beauty sleeked the streams ! 
 
 Round Arcady's oak its green 
 
 The Bromian ivy weaves ; 
 But no more is the satyr seen 
 
 Laughing out from the glossy leaves. 
 Hushed is the Lycian lute, 
 
 Still grows the seed 
 
 Of the Mcenale reed, 
 But the pipe of Pan is mute ! 
 
 The leaves in the noon-day quiver ; 
 
 The vines on the mountains wave ; 
 And Tiber rolls his river 
 
 As fresh by the Sy Ivan's cave. 
 But my brothers are dead and gone ; 
 
 And far away 
 
 From their graves I stray. 
 And dream of the past alone ! 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 211 
 
 And the sun of the north is chill ; 
 
 And keen is the northern gale ; 
 Alas for the soug of the Argive hill; 
 
 And the dance in the Cretan vale ! 
 The youth of the earth is o'er, 
 
 And its breast is rife 
 
 With the teeming life 
 Of the golden Tribes no more ! 
 
 My race are more blest than I, 
 
 Asleep in their distant bed ; 
 *T were better, be sure, to die 
 
 Than to mourn for the buried Dead : 
 To rove by the stranger streams, 
 
 At dusk and dawn 
 
 A lonely faun, 
 The last of the Grecian's dreams. 
 
 As the song ended a shadow crossed the moonlight, that lay 
 white and lustrous before the aperture of the cavern; and 
 Nymphalin, looking up, beheld a graceful yet grotesque figure 
 standing on the sward without, and gazing on the group in 
 the cave. It was a shaggy form, with a goat's legs and 
 ears ; but the rest of its body, and the height of the stature, 
 like a man's. An arch, pleasant, yet malicious smile played 
 about its lips; and in its hand it held the pastoral pipe of 
 which poets have sung, — they would find it difficult to sing 
 to it! 
 
 "And who art thou?" said Fayzenheim, with the air of a 
 hero. 
 
 "I am the last lingering wanderer of the race which the 
 Romans worshipped; hither I followed their victorious steps, 
 and in these green hollows have I remained. Sometimes in 
 the still noon, when the leaves of spring bud upon the whis- 
 pering woods, I peer forth from my rocky lair, and startle the 
 peasant with my strange voice and stranger shape. Then goes 
 he home, and puzzles his thick brain with mopes and fancies, 
 
212 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 till at length lie imagines me, the creature of the South! one 
 of his northern demons, and his poets adapt the apparition to 
 their barbarous lines." 
 
 "Ho!" quoth the silver king, "surely thou art the origin 
 of the fabled Satan of the cowled men living whilom in yon- 
 der ruins, with its horns and goatish limbs; and the harmless 
 faun has been made the figuration of the most implacable of 
 fiends. But why, wanderer of the South, liugerest thou in 
 these foreign dells? Why returnest thou not to the bi-forked 
 hill -top of old Parnassus, or the wastes around the yellow 
 course of the Tiber? " 
 
 "My brethren are no more," said the poor faun; "and the 
 very faith that left us sacred and unharmed is departed. But 
 here all the spirits not of mortality are still honoured; and I 
 wander, mourning for Silenus, though amidst the vines thtit 
 shonld console me for his loss." 
 
 "Thou hast known great beings in thy day," said the leaden 
 king, who loved the philosophy of a truism (and the history 
 of whose inspirations I shall one day write). 
 
 "Ah, yes," said the faun; "my birth was amidst the fresh- 
 ness of the world, when the flush of the universal life coloured 
 all things with divinity; when not a tree but had its Dryad, 
 not a fountain that was without its Nymph. I sat by the gray 
 throne of Saturn, in his old age, ere yet he was discrowned 
 (for he was no visionary ideal, but the arch monarch of the 
 pastoral age), and heard from his lips the history of the 
 world's birth. But those times are gone forever, — they have 
 left harsh successors." 
 
 "It is the age of paper," muttered the lord treasurer, shak- 
 ing his head. 
 
 "What ho, for a dance!" cried Fayzenheim, too royal for 
 moralities, and he whirled the beautiful Nymphalin into a 
 waltz. Then forth issued the fairies, and out went the dwarfs. 
 And the faun leaning against an aged elm, ere yet the mid- 
 night waned, the elves danced their charmed round to the an- 
 tique minstrelsy of his pipe,— the minstrelsy of the Grecian 
 world ! 
 
 "Hast thou seen yet, my Nymphalin," said Fayzenheim, in 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 213 
 
 the pauses of the dance, " the recess of the Hartz, and the red 
 form of its mighty hunter? " 
 
 "It is a fearful sight," answered Nymphalin; "but with 
 thee I should not fear." 
 
 "Away then! " cried Fayzenheim; "let us away at the first 
 cock-crow, into those shaggy dells; for there is no need of 
 night to conceal us, and the unwitnessed blush of morn or the 
 dreary silence of noon is, no less than the moon's reign, the 
 season for the sports of the superhuman tribes." 
 
 Nymphalin, charmed with the proposal, readily assented; 
 and at the last hour of night, bestriding the starbeams of the 
 many-titled Friga, away sped the fairy cavalcade to the gloom 
 of the mystic Hartz. 
 
 Fain would I relate the manner of their arrival in the thick 
 recesses of the forest, — how they found the Red Hunter seated 
 on a fallen pine beside a wide chasm in the earth, with the 
 arching bows of the wizard oak wreathing above his head as a 
 canopy, and his bow and spear lying idle at his feet. Fain 
 would I tell of the reception which he deigned to the fairies, 
 and how he told them of his ancient victories over man; how 
 he chafed at the gathering invasions of his realm; and how 
 joyously he gloated of some great convulsion ^ in the northern 
 States, which, rapt into moody reveries in those solitary woods, 
 the fierce demon brood ingly foresaw. All these fain would I 
 narrate, but they are not of the Ehine, and my story will not 
 brook the delay. While thus conversing with the fiend, noon 
 had crept on, and the sky had become overcast and lowering ; 
 the giant trees waved gustily to and fro, and the low gather- 
 ings of the thunder announced the approaching storm. Then 
 the hunter rose and stretched his mighty limbs, and seizing 
 his spear, he strode rapidly into the forest to meet the things 
 of his own tribe that the tempest wakes from their rugged 
 lair. 
 
 A sudden recollection broke upon Nymphalin. "Alas, 
 
 alas ! " she cried, wringing her hands ; " what have I done ! 
 
 In journeying hither with thee, I have forgotten my office. 
 
 I have neglected my watch over the elements, and my human 
 
 ^ Which has come to pass. — 1847. 
 
214 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 charge is at this hour, perhaps, exposed to all the fury of 
 the storm." 
 
 "Cheer thee, my Nymphalin, " said the prince, "we will lay 
 the tempest ; " and he waved his sword and muttered the 
 charms which curb the winds and roll back the marching 
 thunder: but for once the tempest ceased not at his spells. 
 And now, as the fairies sped along the troubled air, a pale 
 and beautiful form met them by the way, and the fairies 
 paused and trembled ; for the power of that Shape could van- 
 quish even them. It was the form of a Female, with golden 
 hair, crowned with a chaplet of withered leaves ; her bosoms, 
 of an exceeding beauty, lay bare to the wind, and an infant 
 was clasped between them, hushed into a sleep so still, that 
 neither the roar of the thunder, nor the livid lightning flashing 
 from cloud to cloud, could even rufSe, much less arouse, the 
 slumberer. And the face of the female was unutterably calm 
 and sweet (though with a something of severe) ; there was no 
 line nor wrinkle in the hueless brow; care never wrote its 
 defacing characters upon that everlasting beauty. It knew 
 no sorrow or change; ghostlike and shadowy floated on that 
 Shape through the abyss of Time, governing the world with 
 an unquestioned and noiseless sway. And the children of the 
 green solitudes of the earth, the lovely fairies of my tale, 
 shuddered as they gazed and recognized — the form of death, 
 — death vindicated. 
 
 "And why," said the beautiful Shape, with a voice soft as 
 the last sighs of a dying babe, — "why trouble ye the air with 
 spells?' Mine is the hour and the empire, and the storm is the 
 creature of my power. Far yonder to the west it sweeps over 
 the sea, and the ship ceases to vex the waves ; it smites the 
 forest, and the destined tree, torn from its roots, feels the 
 winter strip the gladness from its boughs no more ! The roar 
 of the elements is the herald of eternal stillness to their vic- 
 tims ; and they who hear the progress of my power idly shud- 
 der at the coming of peace. And thou, tender daughter of 
 the fairy kings, why grievest thou at a mortal's doom? 
 Knowest thou not that sorrow cometh with years, and that 
 to live is to mourn? Blessed is the flower that, nipped in its 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 215 
 
 early spring, feels not the blast that one by one scatters its 
 blossoms around it, and leaves but the barren stem. Blessed 
 are the young whom I clasp to my breast, and lull into the 
 sleep which the storm cannot break, nor the morrow arouse 
 to sorrow or to toil. The heart that is stilled in the bloom 
 of its first emotions, that turns with its last throb to the eye 
 of love, as yet unlearned in the possibility of change, — has 
 exhausted already the wine of life, and is saved only from the 
 lees. As the mother soothes to sleep the wail of her troubled 
 child, I open my arms to the vexed spirit, and my bosom 
 cradles the unquiet to repose ! " 
 
 The fairies answered not, for a chill and a fear lay over 
 them, and the Shape glided on; ever as it passed away through 
 the veiling clouds they heard its low voice singing amidst the 
 roar of the storm, as the dirge of the water-sprite over the 
 vessel it hath lured into the whirlpool or the shoals. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVII. 
 
 THURMBERG. A STORM UPON THE RHINE. — THE RUINS OF 
 
 RHEINFELS. PERIL UNFELT BY LOVE. THE ECHO OP 
 
 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. 
 
 Our party continued their voyage the next day, which was 
 less bright than any they had yet experienced. The clouds 
 swept on dull and heavy, suffering the sun only to break forth 
 at scattered intervals. They wound round the curving bay 
 which the Rhine forms in that part of its course, and gazed 
 upon the ruins of Thurmberg, with the rich gardens that skirt 
 the banks below. The last time Trevylyan had seen those 
 ruins soaring against the sky, the green foliage at the foot of 
 
216 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 tlie rocks, and the quiet village sequestered beneath, glassing 
 its roofs and solitary tower upon the wave, it had been with a 
 gay summer troop of light friends, who had paused on the 
 opposite shore during the heats of noon, and, over wine and 
 fruits, had mimicked the groups of Boccaccio, and intermin- 
 gled the lute, the jest, the momentary love, and the laughing 
 tale. 
 
 What a difference now in his thoughts, in the object of the 
 voyage, in his present companions! The feet of years fall 
 noiseless ; we heed, we note them not, till tracking the same 
 course we passed long since, we are startled to find how deep 
 the impression they leave behind. To revisit the scenes of 
 our youth is to commune with the ghost of ourselves. 
 
 At this time the clouds gathered rapidly along the heavens, 
 and they were startled by the first peal of the thunder. Sud- 
 den and swift came on the storm, and Trevylyan trembled as 
 he covered Gertrude's form with the rude boat-cloaks they 
 had brought with them ; the small vessel began to rock wildly 
 to and fro upon the waters. High above them rose the vast 
 dismantled ruins of Rheinfels, the lightning darting through 
 its shattered casements and broken arches, and brightening 
 the gloomy trees that here and there clothed the rocks, and 
 tossed to the angry wind. Swift wheeled the water-birds over 
 the river, dipping their plumage in the white foam, and utter- 
 ing their discordant screams. A storm upon the Rhine has a 
 grandeur it is in vain to paint. Its rocks, its foliage, the 
 feudal ruins that everywhere rise from the lofty heights, 
 speaking in characters of stern decay of many a former battle 
 against time and tempest; the broad and rapid course of the 
 legendary river, — all harmonize with the elementary strife; 
 and you feel that to see the Rhine only in the sunshine is to 
 be unconscious of its most majestic aspects. What baronial 
 war had those ruins witnessed ! From the rapine of the lordly 
 tyrant of those battlements rose the first Confederation of the 
 Rhine, — the great strife between the new time and the old, 
 the town and the castle, the citizen and the chief. Gray and 
 stern those ruins breasted the storm, — a type of the antique 
 opinion which once manned them with armed serfs; and, yet 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 217 
 
 in ruins and decay, appeals from the victorious freedom it 
 may no longer resist! 
 
 Clasped in Trevylyan's guardian arms, and her head pil- 
 lowed on his breast, Gertrude felt nothing of the storm save 
 its grandeur; and Trevylyan's voice whispered cheer and cour- 
 age to her ear. She answered by a smile and a sigh, but not 
 of pain. In the convulsions of nature we forget our own sepa- 
 rate existence, our schemes, our projects, our fears ; our dreams 
 vanish back into their cells. One passion only the storm 
 quells not, and the presence of Love mingles with the voice 
 of the fiercest storms, as with the whispers of the southern 
 wind. So she felt, as they were thus drawn close together? 
 and as she strove to smile away the anxious terror from Trevyl- 
 yan's gaze, a security, a delight; for peril is sweet even to 
 the fears of woman, when it impresses upon her yet more 
 vividly that she is beloved. 
 
 ''A moment more and we reach the land," murmured 
 Trevylyan. 
 
 "I wish it not," answered Gertrude, softly. But ere they 
 got into St. Goar the rain descended in torrents, and even the 
 thick coverings round Gertrude's form were not sufficient pro- 
 tection against it. Wet and dripping she reached the inn; 
 but not then, nor for some days, was she sensible of the shock 
 her decaying health had received. 
 
 The storm lasted but a few hours, and the sun afterwards 
 broke forth so brightly, and the stream looked so inviting, 
 that they yielded to Gertrude's earnest wish, and, taking a 
 larger vessel, continued their course; they passed along the 
 narrow and dangerous defile of the Gewirre, and the fearful 
 whirlpool of the " Bank ; " and on the shore to the left the 
 enormous rock of Lurlei rose, huge and shapeless, on their 
 gaze. In this place is a singular echo, and one of the boatmen 
 wouud a horn, which produced an almost supernatural music, 
 — so wild, loud, and oft reverberated was its sound. 
 
 The river now curved along in a narrow and deep channel 
 amongst rugged steeps, on which the westering sun cast long 
 and uncouth shadows; and here the hermit, from whose sacred 
 name the town of St. Goar derived its own, fixed his abode 
 
218 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 aud preached the religion of the Cross. " There was a certain 
 vastness of mind," said Vane, "in the adoption of utter soli- 
 tude, in which the first enthusiasts of our religion indulged. 
 The remote desert, the solitary rock, the rude dwelling hol- 
 lowed from the cave, the eternal commune with their own 
 hearts, with nature, and their dreams of God, — all make a 
 picture of severe and preterhuman grandeur. Say what we 
 will of the necessity and charm of social life, there is a great- 
 ness about man when he dispenses with mankind." 
 
 "As to that," said Du e, shrugging his shoulders, "there 
 
 was probably very good wine in the neighbourhood, and the 
 females' eyes about Oberwesel are singularly blue." 
 
 They now approached Oberwesel, another of the once impe- 
 rial towns, and behind it beheld the remains of the castle of 
 the illustrious family of Schomberg, the ancestors of the old 
 hero of the Boyne. A little farther on, from the opposite 
 shore, the castle of Gutenfels rose above the busy town of 
 Kaub. 
 
 "Another of those scenes," said Trevylyan, "celebrated 
 equally by love and glory, for the castle's name is derived 
 from that of the beautiful ladye of an emperor's passion; and 
 below, upon a ridge in the steep, the great Gustavus issued 
 forth his command to begin battle with the Spaniards." 
 
 "It looks peaceful enough now," said Vane, pointing to the 
 craft that lay along the stream, and the green trees drooping 
 over a curve in the bank. Beyond, in the middle of the 
 stream itself, stands the lonely castle of Pfalzgrafenstein, 
 sadly memorable as a prison to the more distinguished of 
 criminals. How many pining eyes may have turned from those 
 casements to the vine-clad hills of the free shore ! how many 
 indignant hearts have nursed the deep curses of hate in the 
 dungeons below, and longed for the wave that dashed against 
 the gray walls to force its way within and set them free! 
 
 Here the Rhine seems utterly bounded, shrunk into one of 
 those delusive lakes into which it so frequently seems to 
 change its course; and as you proceed, it is as if the waters 
 were silently overflowing their channel and forcing their way 
 into the clefts of the mountain shore. Passing the Werth 
 
THE riLGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 219 
 
 Island ou one side and the castle of Stahleck on the other, our 
 voyagers arrived at Bacharach, which, associating the feudal 
 recollections with the classic, takes its name from the god of 
 
 the vine; and as Du e declared with peculiar emphasis, 
 
 quaffing a large goblet of the peculiar liquor, " richly deserves 
 the honour! " 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE VOYAGE TO BINGEN. THE SIMPLE INCIDENTS IN THIS 
 
 TALE EXCUSED. THE SITUATION AND CHARACTER OF GER- 
 TRUDE. THE CONVERSATION OF THE LOVERS IN THE TEM- 
 PEST. A FACT CONTRADICTED. THOUGHTS OCCASIONED 
 
 BY A MADHOUSE AMONGST THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LAND- 
 SCAPES OF THE RHINE. 
 
 The next day they again resumed their voyage, and Ger- 
 trude's spirits were more cheerful than usual. The air seemed 
 to her lighter, and she breathed with a less painful effort; 
 once more hope entered the breast of Trevylyan ; and, as the 
 vessel bounded on, their conversation was steeped in no som- 
 bre hues. When Gertrude's health permitted, no temper was 
 so gay, yet so gently gay, as hers; and now the naive sportive- 
 ness of her remarks called a smile to the placid lip of Vane, 
 and smoothed the anxious front of Trevylyan himself; as for 
 
 Du e, who had much of the boon companion beneath his 
 
 professional gravity, he broke out every now and then into 
 snatches of French songs and drinking glees, which he de- 
 clared were the result of the air of Bacharach. Thus con- 
 versing, the ruins of Furstenberg, and the echoing vale of 
 Rheindeibach, glided past their sail; then the old town of 
 Lorch, on the opposite bank (where the red wine is said first 
 to have been made), with the green island before it in the 
 water. Winding round, the stream showed castle upon castle 
 alike in ruins, and built alike upon scarce accessible steeps. 
 Then came the chapel of St. Clements and the opposing 
 
220 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 village of Asmannshausen ; the lofty Kossell, built at the 
 extremest verge of the cliff; and now the tower of Hatto, 
 celebrated by Southey's ballad, and the ancient town of 
 Bingen. Here they paused a while from their voyage, with 
 the intention of visiting more minutely the Kheingau, or val- 
 ley of the Ehine. 
 
 It must occur to every one of my readers, that, in undertak- 
 ing, as now, in these passages in the history of Trevylyan, 
 scarcely so much a tale as an episode in real life, it is very 
 difficult to offer any interest save of the most simple and un- 
 exciting kind. It is true that to Trevylyan every day, every 
 hour, had its incident; but what are those incidents to others? 
 A cloud in the sky; a smile from the lip of Gertrude, — these 
 were to him far more full of events than had been the most 
 varied scenes of his former adventurous career; but the his- 
 tory of the heart is not easily translated into language; and 
 the world will not readily pause from its business to watch 
 the alternations in the cheek of a dying girl. 
 
 In the immense sum of human existence what is a single 
 unit? Every sod on which we tread is the grave of some former 
 being; yet is there something that softens without enervating 
 the heart in tracing in the life of another those emotions that 
 all of us have known ourselves. For who is there that has 
 not, in his progress through life, felt all its ordinary business 
 arrested, and the varieties of fate commuted into one chronicle 
 of the affections? Who has not watched over the passing 
 away of some being, more to him at that epoch than all the 
 world? And this unit, so trivial to the calculation of others, 
 of what inestimable value was it not to him? Retracing in 
 another such recollections, shadowed and mellowed down by 
 time, we feel the wonderful sanctity of human life, we feel 
 what emotions a single being can awake; what a world of 
 hope may be buried in a single grave! And thus we keep 
 alive within ourselves the soft springs of that morality which 
 unites us with our kind, and sheds over the harsh scenes and 
 turbulent contests of earth the colouring of a common love. 
 
 There is often, too, in the time of year in which such 
 thoughts are presented to us, a certain harmony with the feel- 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 221 
 
 ings they awaken. As I write I hear the last sighs of the de- 
 parting suininer, and the sere and yellow leaf is visible in the 
 green of nature. But when this book goes forth into the 
 world, the year will have passed through a deeper cycle of 
 decay; and the first melancholy signs of winter have breathed 
 into the Universal Mind that sadness which associates itself 
 readily with the memory of friends, of feelings, that are no 
 more. The seasons, like ourselves, track their course by 
 something of beauty, or of glory, that is left behind. As the 
 traveller in the land of Palestine sees tomb after tomb rise 
 before him, the landmarks of his way, and the only signs of 
 the holiness of the soil, thus Memory wanders over the most 
 sacred spots in its various world, and traces them but by the 
 graves of the Past. 
 
 It was now that Gertrude began to feel the shock her frame 
 had received in the storm upon the Rhine. Cold shiverings 
 frequently seized her; her cough became more hollow, and 
 her form trembled at the slightest breeze. 
 
 Vane grew seriously alarmed; he repented that he had 
 yielded to Gertrude's wish of substituting the Rhine for the 
 Tiber or the Arno; and would even now have hurried across 
 
 the Alps to a warmer clime, if Du e had not declared that 
 
 she could not survive the journey, and that her sole chance of 
 regaining her strength was rest. Gertrude herself, however, 
 in the continued delusion of her disease, clung to the belief of 
 recovery, and still supported the hopes of her father, and 
 soothed, with secret talk of the future, the anguish of her 
 betrothed. The reader may remember that in the most touch- 
 ing passage in the ancient tragedians, the most pathetic part 
 of the most pathetic of human poets — the pleading speech of 
 Iphigenia, when imploring for her prolonged life, she im- 
 presses you with so soft a picture of its innocence and its 
 beauty, and in this Gertrude resembled the Greek's creation 
 — that she felt, on the verge of death, all the flush, the glow, 
 the loveliness of life. Her youth was filled with hope and 
 many-coloured dreams; she loved, and the hues of morning 
 slept upon the yet disenchanted earth. The heavens to her 
 were not as the common sky; the wave had its peculiar music 
 
222 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 to her ear, and the rustling leaves a pleasantness that none 
 whose heart is not bathed in the love and sense of beauty 
 could discern. Therefore it was, in future years, a thought 
 of deep gratitude to Trevylyan that she was so little sensible 
 of her danger; that the landscape caught not the gloom of the 
 grave ; and that, in the Greek phrase, " death found her sleep- 
 ing amongst flowers." 
 
 At the end of a few days, another of those sudden turns, 
 common to her malady, occurred in Gertrude's health; her 
 youth and her happiness rallied against the encroaching 
 tyrant, and for the ensuing fortnight she seemed once more 
 within the bounds of hope. During this time they made sev- 
 eral excursions into the Rheingau, and finished their tour at 
 the ancient Heidelberg. 
 
 One morning, in these excursions, after threading the wood 
 of Niederwald, they gained that small and fairy temple, 
 which hanging lightly over the mountain's brow, commands 
 one of the noblest landscapes of earth. There, seated side by 
 side, the lovers looked over the beautiful world below ; far to 
 the left lay the happy islets, in the embrace of the Ehine, as it 
 wound along the low and curving meadows that stretch away 
 towards Nieder-Ingelheim and Mayence. Glistening in the 
 distance, the opposite Nah swept by the Mause tower, and the 
 ruins of Klopp, crowning the ancient Bingen, into the mother 
 tide. There, on either side the town, were the mountains of 
 St. Roch and Rupert, with some old monastic ruin saddening 
 in the sun. But nearer, below the temple, contrasting all the 
 other features of landscape, yawned a dark and rugged gulf, 
 girt by cragged elms and mouldering towers, the very prototype 
 of the abyss of time, — black and fathomless amidst ruin and 
 desolation. 
 
 "I think sometimes," said Gertrude, "as in scenes like 
 these we sit together, and rapt from the actual world, see 
 only the enchantment that distance lends to our view, — I 
 think sometimes what pleasure it will be hereafter to recall 
 these hours. If ever you should love me less, I need only 
 whisper to you, 'The Rhine,' and will not all the feelings you 
 have now for me return? " 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 223 
 
 " Ah, there will never be occasion to recall my love for you, 
 — it can never decay." 
 
 " What a strange thing is life!" said Gertrude; "how un- 
 connected, how desultory seem all its links! Has this sweet 
 pause from trouble, from the ordinary cares of life — has it 
 anything in common with your past career, with your future? 
 You will go into the great world; in a few years hence these 
 moments of leisure and musing will be denied to you. The 
 action that you love and court is a jealous sphere, — it allows 
 no wandering, no repose. These moments will then seem to 
 you but as yonder islands that stud the Khine, — the stream 
 lingers by them for a moment, and then hurries on in its rapid 
 course; they vary, but they do not interrupt the tide." 
 
 "You are fanciful, my Gertrude; but your simile might be 
 juster. Kather let these banks be as our lives, and this river 
 the one thought that flows eternally by both, blessing each 
 with undying freshness." 
 
 Gertrude smiled; and, as Trevylyan's arm encircled her, 
 she sank her beautiful face upon his bosom, he covered it with 
 his kisses, and she thought at the moment, that, even had she 
 passed death, that embrace could have recalled her to life. 
 
 They pursued their course to Mayence, partly by land, 
 partly along the river. One day, as returning from the vine- 
 clad mountains of Johannisberg, which commands the whole 
 of the Rheingau, the most beautiful valley in the world, they 
 proceeded by water to the town of Ellfeld, Gertrude said, — 
 
 " There is a thought in your favourite poet which you have 
 often repeated, and which I cannot think true, — 
 
 " ' In nature there is nothing melancholy.' 
 
 To me, it seems as if a certain melancholy were inseparable 
 from beauty ; in the sunniest noon there is a sense of solitude 
 and stillness which pervades the landscape, and even in the 
 flush of life inspires us with a musing and tender sadness. 
 Why is this?" 
 
 "I cannot tell," said Trevylyan, mournfully; "but I allow 
 that it is true." 
 
 "It is as if," continued the romantic Gertrude, "the spirit 
 
224 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHIXE. 
 
 of the world spoke to us in the silence, and filled us with a 
 sense of our mortality, — a whisper from the religion that be- 
 longs to nature, and is ever seeking to unite the earth with the 
 reminiscences of Heaven. Ah, what without a heaven would 
 be even love ! — a perpetual terror of the separation that must 
 one day come! If," she resumed solemnly, after a momen- 
 tary pause, and a shadow settled on her young face, " if it be 
 true, Albert, that I must leave you soon — " 
 
 "It cannot! it cannot!" cried Trevylyan, wildly; "be still, 
 be silent, I beseech you." 
 
 " Look yonder, " said Du e, breaking seasonably in upon 
 
 the conversation of the lovers; "on that hill to the left, what 
 once was an abbey is now an asylum for the insane. Does it 
 not seem a quiet and serene abode for the unstruug and erring 
 minds that tenant it? What a mystery is there in our con- 
 formation! — those strange and bewildered fancies which re- 
 place our solid reason, what a moral of our human weakness 
 do they breathe ! " 
 
 It does indeed induce a dark and singular train of thought, 
 when, in the midst of these lovely scenes, we chance upon this 
 lone retreat for those on whose eyes Xature, perhaps, smiles 
 in vain. Or is it in vain ? They look down upon the broad 
 Rhine, with its tranquil isles: do their wild delusions endow 
 the river with another name, and people the valleys with no 
 living shapes? Does the broken mirror within reflect back 
 the countenance of real things, or shadows and shapes, crossed, 
 mingled, and bewildered, — the phantasma of a sick man's 
 dreams? Yet, perchance, one memory unscathed by the gen- 
 eral ruin of the brain can make even the beautiful Rhine more 
 beautiful than it is to the common eye ; can calm it with the 
 hues of departed love, and bids its possessor walk over its 
 vine-clad mountains with the beings that have ceased to be ! 
 There, perhaps, the self-made monarch sits upon his throne 
 and claims the vessels as his fleet, the waves and the valleys 
 as his own; there, the enthusiast, blasted by the light of some 
 imaginary creed, beholds the shapes of angels, and watches in 
 the clouds round the setting sun the pavilions of God ; there 
 the victim of forsaken or perished love, mightier than the sor- 
 
THE riLGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 225 
 
 cerers of old, evokes the dead, or recalls the faithless by the 
 philter of undying fancies. Ah, blessed art thou, the winged 
 power of Imagination that is within us ! conquering even grief, 
 brightening even despair. Thou takest us from the world 
 when reason can no longer bind us to it, and givest to the 
 maniac the inspiration and the solace of the bard! Thou, the 
 parent of the purer love, lingerest like love, when even our- 
 self forsakes us, and lightest up the shattered chambers of the 
 heart with the glory that makes a sanctity of decay. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 ELLFELD. MAYENCE. HEIDELBERG. A CONVERSATION BE- 
 TWEEN VANE AND THE GERMAN STUDENT. THE RUINS 
 
 OF THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG AND ITS SOLITARY 
 HABITANT. 
 
 It was now the full noon; light clouds were bearing up 
 towards the opposite banks of the Ehine, but over the Gothic 
 towers of Ellfeld the sky spread blue and clear; the river 
 danced beside the old gray walls with a sunny wave, and 
 close at hand a vessel crowded with passengers, and loud with 
 eager voices, gave a merry life to the scene. On the opposite 
 bank the hills sloped away into the far horizon, and one slight 
 skiff in the midst of the waters broke the solitary brightness 
 of the noonday calm. 
 
 The town of Ellfeld was the gift of Otho the First to the 
 Church; not far from thence is the crystal spring that gives 
 its name to the delicious grape of Markbrunner. 
 
 "Ah," quoth Du e, "doubtless the good bishops of May- 
 
 ence made the best of the vicinity ! " 
 
 They stayed some little time at tliis town, and visited the 
 ruins of Scharfenstein; thence proceeding up the river, they 
 passed Nieder Walluf, called the Gate of the Rheingau, and 
 the luxuriant garden of Schierstein; thence, sailing by the 
 
 15 
 
226 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 castle-seat of the Prince Nassau Usingen, and passing two 
 long and narrow isles, they arrived at Mayence, as the sun 
 shot his last rays upon the waters, gilding the proud cathe- 
 dral-spire, and breaking the mists that began to gather be- 
 hind, over the rocks of the Rheingau. * 
 
 Ever memorable Mayence, — memorable alike for freedom 
 and for song, within those walls how often woke the gallant 
 music of the Troubadour; and how often beside that river did 
 the heart of the maiden tremble to the lay! Within those 
 walls the stout Walpoden first broached the great scheme of 
 the Hanseatic league; and, more than all, memorable May- 
 ence, thou canst claim the first invention of the mightiest en- 
 gine of human intellect, — the great leveller of power, the 
 Demiurgus of the moral world, — the Press! Here too lived 
 the maligned hero of the greatest drama of modern genius, 
 the traditionary Faust, illustrating in himself the fate of his 
 successors in dispensing knowledge, — held a monster for his 
 wisdom, and consigned to the penalties of hell as a recom- 
 pense for the benefits he had conferred on earth! 
 
 At Mayence, Gertrude heard so much and so constantly of 
 Heidelberg, that she grew impatient to visit that enchanting 
 
 town; and as Du e considered the air of Heidelberg more 
 
 pure and invigorating than that of Mayence, they resolved to 
 fix within it their temporary residence, Alas! it was the 
 place destined to close their brief and melancholy pilgrimage, 
 and to become to the heart of Trevylyan the holiest spot 
 which the earth contained, — the Kaaba of the world. But 
 Gertrude, unconscious of her fate, conversed gayly as their 
 carriage rolled rapidly on, and, constantly alive to every new 
 sensation, she touched with her characteristic vivacity on all 
 that they had seen in their previous route. There is a great 
 charm in the observations of one new to the world ; if we our- 
 selves have become somewhat tired of "its hack sights and 
 sounds," we hear in their freshness a voice from our own 
 youth. 
 
 In the haunted valley of the Neckar, the most crystal of 
 rivers, stands the town of Heidelberg. The shades of even- 
 ing gathered round it as their heavy carriage rattled along the 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 227 
 
 antique streets, and not till the next day was Gertrude aware 
 of all the unrivalled beauties that environ the place. 
 
 Vane, who was an early riser, went forth alone in the 
 morning to reconnoitre the town; and as he was gazing on 
 the tower of St. Peter, he heard himself suddenly accosted. 
 He turned round and saw the German student whom they had 
 met among the mountains of Taunus at his elbow. 
 
 "Monsieur has chosen well in coming hither," said the stu- 
 dent; "and I trust our town will not disappoint his ex- 
 pectations." Vane answered with courtesy, and the German 
 offering to accompany him in his walk, their conversation fell 
 naturally on the life of a university, and the current educa- 
 tion of the German people. 
 
 "It is surprising," said the student, "that men are eternally 
 inventing new systems of education, and yet persevering in 
 the old. How man}' years ago is it since Fichte predicted in 
 the system of Pestalozzi the regeneration of the German 
 people? What has it done? We admire, we praise, and we 
 blunder on in the very course Pestalozzi proves to be erro- 
 neous. Certainly," continued the student, "there must be 
 some radical defect in a system of culture in which genius is 
 an exception, and dulness the result. Yet here, in our German 
 universities, everything proves that education without equita- 
 ble institutions avails little in the general formation of char- 
 acter. Here the young men of the colleges mix on the most 
 equal terms ; they are daring, romantic, enamoured of freedom 
 even to its madness. They leave the University: no political 
 career continues the train of mind they had acquired; they 
 plunge into obscurity; live scattered and separate, and the 
 student inebriated with Schiller sinks into the passive priest 
 or the lethargic baron. His college career, so far from indi- 
 cating his future life, exactly reverses it: he is brought up in 
 one course in order to proceed in another. And this I hold to 
 be the universal error of education in all countries ; they con- 
 ceive it a certain something to be finished at a certain age. 
 They do not make it a part of the continuous history of life, 
 but a wandering from it." 
 
 "You have been in England? " asked Vane. 
 
228 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 " Yes ; I have travelled over nearly the whole of it on foot. 
 1 was poor at that time, and imagining there was a sort of 
 masonry between all men of letters, I inquired at each town 
 for the savants, and asked money of them as a matter of 
 course." 
 
 Vane almost laughed outright at the simplicity and naive 
 unconsciousness of degradation with which the student pro- 
 claimed himself a public beggar. 
 
 " Aud how did you generally succeed? " 
 
 " In most cases I was threatened with the stocks, and twice 
 I was consigned by the juge de paix to the village police, to 
 be passed to some mystic Mecca they were pleased to entitle 
 'a parish. ' Ah " (continued the German with much bonhomie), 
 " it was a pity to see in a great nation so much value attached 
 to such a trifle as money. But what surprised me greatly was 
 the tone of your poetry. Madame de Stael, who knew per- 
 haps as much of England as she did of Germany, tells us that 
 its chief character is the chivalresque ; and, excepting only 
 Scott, who, by the way, is not English, I did not find one 
 chivalrous poet among you. Yet," continued the student, 
 " between ourselves, I fancy that in our present age of civiliza- 
 tion, there is an unexamined mistake in the general mind as 
 to the value of poetry. It delights still as ever, but it has 
 ceased to teach. The prose of the heart enlightens, touches, 
 rouses, far more than poetry. Your most philosophical poets 
 would be commonplace if turned into prose. Verse cannot 
 contain the refining subtle thoughts which a great prose writer 
 embodies; the rhyme eternally cripples it; it properly deals 
 with the common problems of human nature, which are now 
 hackneyed, and not with the nice and philosophizing corolla- 
 ries which may be drawn from them. Thus, though it would 
 seem at first a paradox, commonplace is more the element of 
 poetry than of prose." 
 
 This sentiment charmed Vane, who had nothing of the poet 
 about him; and he took the student to share their breakfast 
 at the inn, with a complacency he rarely experienced at the 
 remeeting with a new acquaintance. 
 
 After breakfast, our party proceeded through the town 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 229 
 
 towards the wonderful castle which is its chief attraction, 
 and the noblest wreck of German grandeur. 
 
 And now pausing, the mountain yet unsealed, the stately 
 ruin frowned upon them, girt by its massive walls and hang- 
 ing terraces, round which from place to place clung the 
 dwarfed and various foliage. High at the rear rose the huge 
 mountain, covered, save at its extreme summit, with dark 
 trees, and concealing in its mysterious breast the shadowy be- 
 ings of the legendary world. But towards the ruins, and up 
 a steep ascent, you may see a few scattered sheep thinly stud- 
 ding the broken ground. Aloft, above the ramparts, rose, 
 desolate and huge, the Palace of the Electors of the Palati- 
 nate. In its broken walls you may trace the tokens of the 
 lightning that blasted its ancient pomp, but still leaves in the 
 vast extent of pile a fitting monument of the memory of Char- 
 lemagne. Below, in the distance, spread the plain far and 
 spacious, till the shadowy river, with one solitary sail upon 
 its breast, united the melancholy scene of earth with the 
 autumnal sky. 
 
 " See, " said Vane, pointing to two peasants who were con- 
 versing near them on the matters of their little trade, utterly 
 unconscious of the associations of the spot, "see, after all 
 that is said and done about human greatness, it is always the 
 greatness of the few. Ages pass, and leave the poor herd, 
 the mass of men, eternally the same, — hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water. The pomp of princes has its ebb and flow, 
 but the peasant sells his fruit as gayly to the stranger on the 
 ruins as to the emperor in the palace." 
 
 "Will it be always so? " said the student. 
 
 "Let us hope not, for the sake of permanence in glory," 
 said Trevylyan. "Had a people built yonder palace, its 
 splendour would never have passed away." 
 
 Vane shrugged his shoulders, and Du e took snuff. 
 
 But all the impressions produced by the castle at a distance 
 are as nothing when you stand within its vast area and behold 
 the architecture of all ages blended into one mighty ruin! 
 The rich hues of the masonry, the sweeping facades — every 
 description of building which man ever framed for war or for 
 
230 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 luxury — is here; all having only the common character, — 
 iiuiN. The feudal rampart, the yawning fosse, the rude 
 tower, the splendid arch, the strength of a fortress, the mag- 
 nificence of a palace, — all united, strike upon the soul like 
 the history of a fallen empire in all its epochs. 
 
 "There is one singular habitant of these ruins," said the 
 student, — "a solitary painter, who has dwelt here some 
 twenty years, companioned only by his Art. No other apart- 
 ment but that which he tenants is occupied by a human 
 being." 
 
 "What a poetical existence!" cried Gertrude, enchanted 
 with a solitude so full of associations. 
 
 "Perhaps so," said the cruel Vane, ever anxious to dispel 
 an illusion, "but more probably custom has deadened to him 
 all that overpowers ourselves with awe; and he may tread 
 among these ruins rather seeking to pick up some rude morsel 
 of antiquity, than feeding his imagination with the dim tradi- 
 tions that invest them with so august a poetry." 
 
 "Monsieur's conjecture has something of the truth in it," 
 said the German; "but then the painter is a Frenchman." 
 
 There is a sense of fatality in the singular mournfulness 
 and majesty which belong to the ruins of Heidelberg, con- 
 trasting the vastness of the strength with the utterness of the 
 ruin. It has been twice struck with lightning, and is the 
 wreck of the elements, not of man; during the great siege it 
 sustained, the lightning is supposed to have struck the powder 
 magazine by accident. 
 
 What a scene for some great imaginative work! What a 
 mocking interference of the wrath of nature in the puny con- 
 tests of men ! One stroke of " the red right arm " above us, 
 crushing the triumph of ages, and laughing to scorn the power 
 of the beleaguers and the valour of the besieged! 
 
 They passed the whole day among these stupendous ruins, 
 and felt, when they descended to their inn, as if they had left 
 the caverns of some mighty tomb. 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 231 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 NO PART OF THE EAKTH REALLY SOLITARY. THE SONG OF 
 
 THE FAIRIES. THE SACRED SPOT. THE WITCH OF THE 
 
 EVIL WINDS. THE SPELL AND THE DUTY OF THE 
 
 FAIRIES. 
 
 But in what spot of the world is there ever utter solitude? 
 The vanity of man supposes that loneliness is his absence! 
 Who shall say what millions of spiritual beings glide invisibly 
 among scenes apparently the most deserted? Or what know 
 we of our own mechanism, that we should deny the possi- 
 bility of life and motion to things that we cannot ourselves 
 recognize? 
 
 At moonlight, in the Great Court of Heidelberg, on the bor- 
 ders of the shattered basin overgrown with weeds, the follow- 
 ing song was heard by the melancholy shades that roam at 
 night through the mouldering halls of old, and the gloomy 
 hollows in the mountain of Heidelberg. 
 
 SONG OF THE FAIRIES IN THE RUINS OF HEIDELBERG. 
 
 From the woods and the glossy green. 
 
 With the wild thyme strewn ; 
 From the rivers whose crisped sheen 
 
 Is kissed bj' the trembling moon ; 
 While the dwarf looks out from his mountain cave, 
 
 And the erl king from his lair, 
 And the water-nymph from her moaning wave, 
 
 We skirr the limber air. 
 
 There 's a smile on the vine-clad shore, 
 
 A smile on the castled heights ; 
 They dream back the days of yore, 
 
 And they smile at our roundel rites ! 
 Our roundel ritea ! 
 
232 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 Lightly we tread these halb arouud, 
 
 Lightly tread we ; 
 Yet, hark ! we have scared with a single sound 
 The moping owl on the breathless tree, 
 And the goblin sprites ! 
 Ha, ha ! we have scared with a single sound 
 The old gray owl on the breathless tree, 
 And the goblin sprites ! 
 
 "They come not," said Pipalee; "yet the banquet is pre- 
 pared, and the poor queen will be glad of some refreshment," 
 
 "What a pity! all the rose-leaves will be over-broiled," 
 said Nip. 
 
 "Let us amuse ourselves with the old painter," quoth Trip, 
 springing over the ruins. 
 
 "Well said," cried Pipalee and Nip; and all three, leaving 
 my lord-treasurer amazed at their levity, whisked into the 
 painter's apartment. Permitting them to throw the ink over 
 their victim's papers, break his pencils, mix his colours, mis- 
 lay his nightcap, and go whiz against his face in the shape of 
 a great bat, till the astonished Frenchman began to think the 
 pensive goblins of the place had taken a sprightly fit, — we 
 hasten to a small green spot some little way from the town, 
 in the valley of the Neckar, and by the banks of its silver 
 stream. It was circled round by dark trees, save on that side 
 bordered by the river. The wild-flowers sprang profusely 
 from the turf, which yet was smooth and singularly green. 
 And there was the German fairy describing a circle round the 
 spot, and making his elvish spells ; and Nymphalin sat droop- 
 iugly in the centre, shading her face, which was bowed down 
 as the head of a water-lily, and weeping crystal tears. 
 
 There came a hollow murmur through the trees, and a rush 
 as of a mighty wind, and a dark form emerged from the shadow 
 and approached the spot. 
 
 The face was wrinkled and old, and stern with a malevolent 
 and evil aspect. The frame was lean and gaunt, and sup- 
 ported by a staff, and a short gray mantle covered its bended 
 shoulders. 
 
 "Things of the moonbeam! " said the form, in a shrill and 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 233 
 
 ghastly voice, " what want ye here ; and why charm ye this 
 spot from the coming of me and mine?" 
 
 "Dark witch of tlie blight and blast," answered the fairy, 
 " THOU that nippest the herb in its tender youth, and eatest 
 up the core of the soft bud ; behold, it is but a small spot that 
 the fairies claim from thy demesnes, and on which, through 
 frost and heat, they will keep the herbage green and the air 
 gentle in its sighs ! " 
 
 "And, wherefore, dweller in the crevices of the earth, 
 wherefore wouldst thou guard this spot from the curses of the 
 seasons? " 
 
 " We know by our instinct, " answered the fairy, " that this 
 spot will become the grave of one whom the fairies love; 
 hither, by an unfelt influence, shall we guide her yet living 
 steps; and in gazing upon this spot shall the desire of quiet 
 and the resignation to death steal upon her soul. Behold, 
 throughout the universe, all things ara at war with one an- 
 other, — the lion with the lamb; the serpent with the bird; 
 and even the gentlest bird itself with the moth of the air, or 
 the worm of the humble earth! What then to men, and to 
 the spirits transcending men, is so lovely and so sacred as a 
 being that harmeth none; what so beautiful as Innocence; 
 what so mournful as its untimely tomb? And shall not that 
 tomb be sacred; shall it not be our peculiar care? May we 
 not mourn over it as at the passing away of some fair miracle 
 in ^Nature, too tender to endure, too rare to be forgotten? It 
 is for this, dread waker of the blast, that the fairies would 
 consecrate this little spot; for this they would charm away 
 from its tranquil turf the wandering ghoul and the evil chil- 
 dren of the night. Here, not the ill-omened owl, nor the 
 blind bat, nor the unclean worm shall come. And thou 
 shouldst have neither will nor power to nip the flowers of 
 spring, nor sear the green herbs of summer. Is it not, dark 
 mother of the evil winds, — is it not onr immemorial ofSce to 
 tend the grave of Innocence, and keep fresh the flowers round 
 the resting-place of Virgin Love? " 
 
 Then the witch drew her cloak round her, and muttered to 
 herself, and without further answer turned away among the 
 
234 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 trees and vanished, as the breath of the east wind, which 
 goeth with her as her comrade, scattered the melancholy 
 leaves along her path! 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 GERTRUDE AND TREVYLVAN, WHEN THE FORMER IS AWAK- 
 ENED TO THE APPROACH OF DEATH. 
 
 The next day, Gertrude and her companions went along the 
 banks of the haunted Neckar. She had passed a sleepless and 
 painful night, and her evanescent and childlike spirits had 
 sobered down into a melancholy and thoughtful mood. She 
 leaned back in an open carriage with Trevylyan, ever con- 
 stant, by her side, while Du e and Vane rode slowly in 
 
 advance. Trevylyan tried in vain to cheer her; even his at- 
 tempts (usually so eagerly received) to charm her duller mo- 
 ments by tale or legend were, in this instance, fruitless. 
 She shook her head gently, pressed his hand, and said, "No, 
 dear Trevylyan, no; even your art fails to-day, but your kind- 
 ness never! " and pressing his hand to her lips, she burst pas- 
 sionately into tears. 
 
 Alarmed and anxious, he clasped her to his breast, and 
 strove to lift her face, as it drooped on its resting-place, and 
 kiss away its tears. "Oh," said she, at length, "do not des- 
 pise my weakness; I am overcome by my own thoughts: I 
 look upon the world, and see that it is fair and good; I look 
 upon you, and I see all that I can venerate and adore. Life 
 seems to me so sweet, and the earth so lovely ; can you won- 
 der, then, that I should shrink at the thought of death? Nay, 
 interrupt me not, dear Albert; the thought must be borne and 
 braved. I have not cherished, I have not yielded to it through 
 my long-increasing illness ; but there have been times when it 
 has forced itself upon me, and now, nmr more palpably than 
 ever. Do not think me weak and childish. I never feared 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 235 
 
 death till I knew you; but to see you no more, — never again 
 to touch this dear hand, never to thank you for your love, 
 never to be sensible of your care, — to lie down and sleep, and 
 never, never, once more to dream of you ! Ah, that is a bitter 
 thoughtl but I will brave it, — yes, brave it as one worthy of 
 your regard." 
 
 Trevylyan, choked by his emotions, covered his own face 
 with his hands, and, leaning back in the carriage, vainly 
 struggled with his sobs. 
 
 "Perhaps," she said, yet ever and anon clinging to the hope 
 that had utterly abandoned him, " perhaps, T may yet deceive 
 myself; and my love for you, which seems to me as if it could 
 conquer death, may bear me up against this fell disease. The 
 hope to live with you, to watch you, to share your high 
 dreams, and oh! above all, to soothe you in sorrow and sick- 
 ness, as you have soothed me — has not that hope something 
 that may support even this sinking frame? And who shall 
 love thee as I love; who see thee as I have seen; who pray 
 for thee in gratitude and tears as I have prayed? Oh, Albert, 
 so little am I jealous of you, so little do I think of myself in 
 comparison, that I could close my eyes happily on the world 
 if I knew that what I could be to thee another will be ! " 
 
 "Gertrude," said Trevylyan, and lifting up his colourless 
 face, he gazed upon her with an earnest and calm solemnity, 
 " Gertrude, let us be united at once ! If Fate must sever us, 
 let her cut the last tie too; let us feel that at least upon earth 
 we have been all in all to each other; let us defy death, even 
 as it frowns upon us. Be mine to-morrow — this day — oh, 
 God! be mine! " 
 
 Over even that pale countenance, beneath whose hues the 
 lamp of life so faintly fluttered, a deep, radiant flush passed 
 one moment, lighting up the beautiful ruin with the glow of 
 maiden youth and impassioned hope, and then died rapidly 
 away. 
 
 "No, Albert," she said sighing; "no! it must not be. Far 
 easier would come the pang to you, while yet we are not 
 •wholly united; and for my own part I am selfish, and feel as 
 if I should leave a tenderer remembrance on your heart thus 
 
236 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 parted, — tenderer, but not so sad. I would not wish you 
 to feel yourself widowed to my memory; I would not cling 
 like a blight to your fair prospects of the future. Kemember 
 me rather as a dream, — as something never wholly won, and 
 therefore asking no fidelity but that of kind and forbearing 
 thoughts. Do you remember one evening as we sailed along 
 the Khine — ah! happy, happy hour! — that we heard from 
 the banks a strain of music, — not so skilfully played as to be 
 worth listening to for itself, but, suiting as it did the hour 
 and the scene, we remained silent, that we might hear it the 
 better; and when it died insensibly upon the waters, a cer- 
 tain melancholy stole over us; we felt that a something that 
 softened the landscape had gone, and we conversed less lightly 
 than before? Just so, my own loved, my own adored Trevyl- 
 yan, just so is the influence that our brief love, your poor 
 Gertrude's existence, should bequeath to your remembrance. 
 A sound, a presence, should haunt you for a little while, but 
 no more, ere you again become sensible of the glories that 
 court your way ! " 
 
 But as Gertrude said this, she turned to Trevylyan, and 
 seeing his agony, she could refrain no longer ; she felt that to 
 soothe was to insult; and throwing herself upon his breast, 
 they mingled their tears together. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 A SPOT TO BE BURIED IN. 
 
 On their return homeward, Du e took the third seat in 
 
 the carriage, and endeavoured, with his usual vivacity, to 
 cheer the spirits of his companions; and such was the elas- 
 ticity of Gertrude's nature, that with her, he, to a certain 
 degree, succeeded in his kindl}' attempt. Quickly alive to the 
 charms of scenery, she entered by degrees into the external 
 beauties which every turn in the road opened to their view; 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RIIIXE. 237 
 
 and the silvery smoothness of the river, that made the con- 
 stant attraction of the landscape, the serenity of the time, and 
 the clearness of the heavens, tended to tranquillize a mind 
 that, like a sunflower, so instinctively turned from the shadow 
 to the light. 
 
 Once Du e stopped the carriage in a spot of herbage, 
 
 bedded among the trees, and said to Gertrude, " We are now 
 in one of the many places along the Neckar which your fa- 
 vourite traditions serve to consecrate. Amidst yonder copses, 
 in the early ages of Christianity, there dwelt a hermit, who, 
 though young in years, was renowned for the sanctity of his 
 life. None knew whence he came, nor for what cause he had 
 limited the circle of life to the seclusion of his cell. He rarely 
 spoke, save when his ghostly advice or his kindly prayer was 
 needed; he lived upon herbs, and the wild fruits which the 
 peasants brought to his cave; and every morning and every 
 evening he came to this spot to fill his pitcher from the water 
 of the stream. But here he was observed to linger long after 
 his task was done, and to sit gazing upon the walls of a con- 
 vent which then rose upon the opposite side of the bank, 
 though now even its ruins are gone. Gradually his health 
 gave way beneath the austerities he practised ; and one even- 
 ing he was found by some fishermen insensible on the turf. 
 They bore him for medical aid to the opposite convent; and 
 one of the sisterhood, the daughter of a prince, was summoned 
 to attend the recluse. But when his eyes opened upon hers, 
 a sudden recognition appeared to seize both. He spoke; and 
 the sister thrcAv herself on the couch of the dying man, and 
 shrieked forth a name, the most famous in the surrounding 
 country, — the name of a once noted minstrel, who, in those 
 rude times, had mingled the poet with the lawless chief, and 
 was supposed, years since, to have fallen in one of the des- 
 perate frays between prince and outlaw, which were then 
 common; storming the very castle which held her, now the 
 pious nun, then the beauty and presider over the tourna- 
 ment and galliard. In her arms the spirit of the hermit 
 passed r^way. She survived but a few hours, and left conjec- 
 ture busy with a history to which it never obtained further 
 
238 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 clew. Many a troubadour in later times furnished forth in 
 poetry the details which truth refused to supply; and the 
 place where the hermit at sunrise and sunset ever came to 
 gaze upon the convent became consecrated by song." 
 
 The place invested with this legendary interest was im- 
 pressed with a singular aspect of melancholy quiet; wild- 
 flowers yet lingered on the turf, whose grassy sedges gently 
 overhung the Keckar, that murmured amidst them with a 
 plaintive music. Not a wind stirred the trees ; but at a little 
 distance from the place, the spire of a church rose amidst the 
 copse; and, as they paused, they suddenly heard from the 
 holy building the bell that summons to the burial of the dead. 
 It came on the ear in such harmony with the spot, with the 
 hour, with the breathing calm, that it thrilled to the heart of 
 each with an inexpressible power. It was like the voice of 
 another world, that amidst the solitude of nature summoned 
 the lulled spirit from the cares of this; it invited, not re- 
 pulsed, and had in its tone more of softness than of awe. 
 
 Gertrude turned, with tears starting to her eyes, and, lay- 
 ing her hand on Trevylyan's, whispered, "In such a spot, so 
 calm, so sequestered, yet in the neighbourhood of the house 
 of God, would I wish this broken frame to be consigned to 
 rest." 
 
 CHAPTER THE LAST. 
 
 THE CONCLUSION OF THIS TALE. 
 
 From that day Gertrude's spirit resumed its wonted cheer- 
 fulness, and for the ensuing week she never reverted to her 
 approaching fate ; she seemed once more to have grown uncon- 
 scious of its limit. Perhaps she sought, anxious for Trevylyan 
 to the last, not to throw additional gloom over their earthly 
 separation ; or, perhaps, once steadily regarding the certainty 
 of her doom, its terrors vanished. The chords of thought, 
 vibrating to the subtlest emotions, may be changed by a single 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 239 
 
 incident, or in a single hour; a sound of sacred music, a green 
 and quiet burial-place, may convert the form of death into the 
 aspect of an angel. And therefore wisely, and with a beauti- 
 ful lore, did the Greeks strip the grave of its unreal gloom ; 
 wisely did they body forth the great principle of Rest by sol- 
 emn and lovely images, unconscious of the northern madness 
 that made a Spectre of Repose! 
 
 But while Gertrude's spirit resumed its healthful tone, her 
 frame rapidly declined, and a few days now could do the rav- 
 age of months a little while before. 
 
 One evening, amidst the desolate ruins of Heidelberg, 
 Trevylyan, who had gone forth alone to indulge the thoughts 
 which he strove to stifle in Gertrude's presence, suddenly en- 
 countered Vane. That calm and almost callous pupil of the 
 adversities of the world was standing alone, and gazing upon 
 the shattered casements and riven tower, through which the 
 sun now cast its slant and parting ray. 
 
 Trevylyan, who had never loved this cold and unsusceptible 
 man, save for the sake of Gertrude, felt now almost a hatred 
 creep over him, as he thought in such a time, and with death 
 fastening upon the flower of his house, he could yet be calm, 
 and smile, and muse, and moralize, and play the common part 
 of the world. He strode slowly up to him, and standing full 
 before him, said with a hollow voice and writhing smile, 
 "You amuse yourself pleasantly, sir: this is a fine scene; and 
 to meditate over griefs a thousand years hushed to rest is 
 better than watching over a sick girl and eating away your 
 heart with fear! " 
 
 Vane looked at him quietly, but intenth', and made no 
 reply. 
 
 "Vane!" continued Trevj-lyan, with the same preternatu- 
 ral attempt at calm, "Vane, in a few days all will be over, 
 and you and I, the things, the plotters, the false men of the 
 world, will be left alone, — left by the sole being that graces 
 our dull life, that makes by her love either of us worthy of a 
 thought! " 
 
 Vane started, and turned away his face. " You are cruel, " 
 said he, with a faltering voice. 
 
240 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 "What, man!" shouted Trevylyan, seizing him abruptly 
 by the arm, "can you feel? Is your cold heart touched? 
 Come then," added he, with a wild laugh, "come, let us be 
 friends ! " 
 
 Vane drew himself aside, with a certain dignity, that im- 
 pressed Trevylyan even at that hour. "Some years hence," 
 said he, "you will be called cold as I am; sorrow will teach 
 you the wisdom of indifference — it is a bitter school, sir, — a 
 bitter school ! But think you that I do indeed see unmoved 
 my last hope shivered, — the last tie that binds me to my 
 kind? No, no! I feel it as a man may feel; I cloak it as a 
 man grown gray in misfortune should do! My child is more 
 to me than your betrothed to you; for you are young and 
 wealthy, and life smiles before you; but I — no more — sir,— 
 no more! " 
 
 "Forgive me," said Trevylyan, humbly, "I have wronged 
 you; but Gertrude is an excuse for any crime of love; and 
 now listen to my last prayer, — give her to me, even on the 
 verge of the grave. Death cannot seize her in the arms, in 
 the vigils of a love like mine." 
 
 Vane shuddered. " It were to wed the dead," said he. "No! " 
 
 Trevylyan drew back, and without another word, hurried 
 away; he returned to the town; he sought, with methodical 
 calmness, the owner of the piece of ground in which Gertrude 
 had wished to be buried. He purchased it, and that very 
 night he sought the priest of a neighbouring church, and di- 
 rected it should be consecrated according to the due rite and 
 ceremonial. 
 
 The priest, an aged and pious man, was struck by the re- 
 quest, and the air of him who made it. 
 
 "Shall it be done forthwith, sir? " said he, hesitating. 
 
 "Forthwith," answered Trevylyan, with a calm smile, — "a 
 bridegroom, you know, is naturally impatient." 
 
 For the next three days, Gertrude was so ill as to be con- 
 fined to her bed. All that time Trevylyan sat outside her 
 door, without speaking, scarcely lifting his eyes from the 
 ground. The attendants passed to and fro, — he heeded them 
 not; perhaps as even the foreign menials turned aside and 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 241 
 
 wiped their eyes, and prayed God to comfort him, he required 
 compassion less at that time than any other. There is a stu- 
 pefaction in woe, and the heart sleeps without a pang when 
 exhausted by its afflictions. 
 
 But on the fourth day Gertrude rose, and was carried down 
 (how changed, yet how lovely ever !) to their common apart- 
 ment. Duriug those three days the priest had been with her 
 often, and her spirit, full of religion from her childhood, had 
 been unspeakably soothed by his comfort. She took food from 
 the hand of Trevylyan; she smiled upon him as sweetly as of 
 old. She conversed with him, though with a faint voice, and 
 at broken intervals. But she felt no pain; life ebbed away 
 gradually, and without a pang. "My father," she said to 
 Vane, whose features still bore their usual calm, whatever 
 might have passed within, "I know that you will grieve when 
 I am gone more than the world might guess; for I alone know 
 what you were years ago, ere friends left you and fortune 
 frowned, and ere my poor mother died. But do not — do not 
 believe that hope and comfort leave you with me. Till the 
 heaven pass away from the earth there shall be comfort and 
 hope for all." 
 
 They did not lodge in the town, but had fixed their abode 
 on its outskirts, and within sight of the Xeckar; and from 
 the window they saw a light sail gliding gayly by till it 
 passed, and solitude once more rested upon the waters. 
 
 "The sail passes from our eyes," said Gertrude, pointing to 
 it, " but still it glides on as happily though we see it no more ; 
 and I feel — yes. Father, I feel — I know that it is so with 
 vs. We glide down the river of time from the eyes of men, 
 but we cease not the less to be ! " 
 
 And now, as the twilight descended, she expressed a wish, 
 before she retired to rest, to be left alone with Trevylyan. 
 He was not then sitting by her side, for he would not trust 
 himself to do so, but with his face averted, at a little distance 
 from her. She called him by his name; he answered not, nor 
 turned. Weak as she was, she raised herself from the sofa, 
 and crept gently along the floor till she came to him, and sank 
 in his arms. 
 
 16 
 
242 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 " Ah, unkind ! " she said, " unkind for once ! Will you turn 
 away from me? Come, let us look once more on the river: 
 see! the night darkens over it. Our pleasant voyage, the type 
 of our love, is finished; our sail may be unfurled no more. 
 Never again can your voice soothe the lassitude of sickness 
 with the legend and the song; the course is run, the vessel is 
 broken up, night closes over its fragments ; but now, in this 
 hour, love me, be kind to me as ever. Still let me be your 
 own Gertrude, still let me close my eyes this night, as before, 
 with the sweet consciousness that I am loved." 
 
 "Loved! Gertrude! speak not to me thus! " 
 
 "Come, that is yourself again! " and she clung with weak 
 arms caressingly to his breast. "And now," she said more 
 solemnly, " let us forget that we are mortal ; let us remember 
 only that life is a part, not the whole, of our career; let us 
 feel in this soft hour, and while yet we are unsevered, the 
 presence of The Eternal that is within us, so that it shall not 
 be as death, but as a short absence; and when once the pang 
 of parting is over, you must think only that we are shortly to 
 meet again. What! you turn from me still? See, I do not 
 weep or grieve, I have conquered the pang of our absence; 
 will you be outdone by me? Do you remember, Albert, that 
 you once told me how the wisest of the sages of old, in prison, 
 and before death, consoled his friends with the proof of the 
 immortality of the soul? Is it not a consolation; does it not 
 suffice; or will you deem it wise from the lips of wisdom, but 
 vain from the lips of love? " 
 
 "Hush, hush!" said Trevylyan, wildly; "or I shall think 
 you an angel already." 
 
 But let us close this commune, and leave unrevealed the last 
 sacred words that ever passed between them upon earth. 
 
 When Vane and the physician stole back softly into the 
 room, Trevylyan motioned to them to be still. "She sleeps," 
 he whispered; "hush!" And in truth, wearied out by her 
 own emotions, and lulled by the belief that she had soothed 
 one with whom her heart dwelt now, as ever, she had fallen 
 into sleep, or it may be, insensibility, on his breast. There 
 as she lay, so fair, so frail, so delicate, the twilight deepened 
 
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 243 
 
 into shade, and the first star, like the hope of the future, 
 broke forth upon the darkness of the earth. 
 
 Nothing could equal the stillness without, save that which 
 lay breathlessly within. For not one of the group stirred or 
 spoke, and Trevylyan, bending over her, never took his eyes 
 from her face, watching the parted lips, and fancying that he 
 imbibed the breath. Alas, the breath was stilled! from sleep 
 to death she had glided without a sigh, — happy, most happy 
 in that death! cradled in the arms of unchanged love, and 
 brightened in her last thought by the consciousness of inno- 
 cence aud the assurances of Heaven! 
 
 Trevylyan, after a long sojourn on the Continent, returned 
 to England. He plunged into active life, and became what is 
 termed in this age of little names a distinguished and noted 
 man. But what was mainly remarkable in his future conduct 
 was his impatience of rest. He eagerly courted all occupa- 
 tions, even of the most varied and motley kind, — business, 
 letters, ambition, pleasure. He suffered no pause in his 
 career; and leisure to him was as care to others. He lived in 
 the world, as the worldly do, discharging its duties, fostering 
 its affections, and fulfilling its career. But there was a deep 
 and wintry change within him, — the sxinlight of his life was 
 gone; the loveliness of romance had left the earth. The stem 
 was proof as heretofore to the blast, but the green leaves were 
 severed from it forever, and the bird had forsaken its boughs. 
 Once he had idolized the beauty that is born of song, the glory 
 and the ardour that invest such thoughts as are not of our 
 common clay; but the well of enthusiasm was dried up, and 
 the golden bowl was broken at the fountain. With Gertrude 
 the poetry of existence was gone. As she herself had de- 
 scribed her loss, a music had ceased to breathe along the face 
 of things; and though the bark might sail on as swiftly, and 
 the stream swell with as proud a wave, a something that had 
 vibrated on the heart was still, and the magic of the voyage 
 was no more. 
 
 And Gertrude sleeps on the spot where she wished her last 
 couch to be made ; and far — oh, far dearer is that small spot 
 
244 THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE. 
 
 on the distant banks of the gliding Neckar to Trevylyan's 
 heart than all the broad lands and fertile fields of his ances- 
 tral domain. The turf too preserves its emerald greenness; 
 and it would seem to me that the field flowers spring up by the 
 sides of the simple tomb even more profusely than of old. A 
 curve in the bank breaks the tide of the Neckar ; and therefore 
 its stream pauses, as if to linger reluctantly, by that solitary 
 grave, and to mourn among the rustling sedges ere it passes 
 on. And I have thought, when I last looked upon that quiet 
 place, when I saw the turf so fresh, and the flowers so bright 
 of hue, that aerial hands might indeed tend the sod; that it 
 was by no imaginary spells that I summoned the fairies to 
 my tale; that in truth, and with vigils constant though un- 
 seen, they yet kept from all polluting footsteps, and from the 
 harsher influence of the seasons, the grave of one who so loved 
 their race ; and who, in her gentle and spotless virtue claimed 
 kindred with the beautiful Ideal of the world. Is there one 
 of us who has not known some being for whom it seemed not 
 too wild a fantasy to indulge such dreams? 
 
 THE END. 
 
THE COMING KACE. 
 
TO 
 
 MAX MtJLLER, 
 
 IN TRIBUTE OF RESPECT AND ADMIRATION. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I AM a native of , in the United States of America. 
 
 My ancestors migrated from England in the reign of Charles 
 II. ; and my grandfather was not undistinguished in the War 
 of Independence. My family, therefore, enjoyed a somewhat 
 high social position in right of birth; and being also opulent, 
 they were considered disqualified for the public service. My 
 father once ran for Congress, but was signally defeated by his 
 tailor. After that event he interfered little in politics, and 
 lived much in his library. I was the eldest of three sons, and 
 sent at the age of sixteen to the old country, partly to com- 
 plete my literary education, partly to commence my commer- 
 cial training in a mercantile firm at Liverpool. My father 
 died shortly after I was twenty -one; and being left well off, 
 and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a 
 time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desul- 
 tory wanderer over the face of the earth. 
 
 In the year 18 — , happening to be in , I was invited 
 
 by a professional engineer, with whom I had made acquain- 
 tance, to visit the recesses of the mine, upon which he 
 
 was employed. 
 
 The reader will understand, ere he close this narrative, my 
 reason for concealing all clew to the district of which I write, 
 and will perhaps thank me for refraining from any descrip- 
 tion that may tend to its discovery. 
 
 Let me say, then, as briefly as possible, that I accompanied 
 the engineer into the interior of the mine, and became so 
 strangely fascinated by its gloomy wonders, and so interested 
 
250 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 in my friend's explorations, that I prolonged my stay in the 
 neighbourhood, and descended daily, for some weeks, into 
 the vaults and galleries hollowed by nature and art beneath 
 the surface of the earth. The engineer was persuaded that far 
 richer deposits of mineral wealth than had yet been detected 
 would be found in a new shaft that had been commenced 
 under his operations. In piercing this shaft we came one 
 day upon a chasm jagged and seemingly charred at the sides, 
 as if burst asunder at some distant period by volcanic fires. 
 Down this chasm my friend caused himself to be lowered in 
 a "cage," having first tested the atmosphere by the safety- 
 lamp. He remained nearly an hour in the abyss. When he 
 returned he was very pale, and with an anxious, thoughtful 
 expression of face, very different from its ordinary character, 
 which was open, cheerful, and fearless. 
 
 He said briefly that the descent appeared to him unsafe, and 
 leading to no result ; and suspending further operations in the 
 shaft, we returned to the more familiar parts of the mine. 
 
 All the rest of that day the engineer seemed pre-occupied 
 by some absorbing thought. He was unusually taciturn, and 
 there was a scared, bewildered look in his eyes, as that of a 
 man who has seen a ghost. At night, as we two were sitting 
 alone in the lodging we shared together near the mouth of 
 the mine, I said to my friend, — 
 
 "Tell me frankly what you saw in that chasm; I am sure it 
 was something strange and terrible. Whatever it be, it has 
 left your mind in a state of doubt. In such a case two heads 
 are better than one. Confide in me." 
 
 The engineer long endeavoured to evade my inquiries ; but 
 as, while he spoke, he helped himself unconsciously out of 
 the brandy-flask to a degree to which he was wholly unac- 
 customed, for he was a very temperate man, his reserve gradu- 
 ally melted away. He who would keep himself to himself 
 should imitate the dumb animals, and drink water. At last 
 he said, " I will tell you all. When the cage stopped, I found 
 myself on a ridge of rock; and below me, the chasm, taking a 
 slanting direction, shot down to a considerable depth, the 
 darkness of which my lamp could not have penetrated. But 
 
THE COMING RACE. 251 
 
 through it, to my infinite surprise, streamed upward a steady- 
 brilliant light. Could it be any volcanic fire? In that case, 
 surely I should have felt the heat. Still, if on this there was 
 doubt, it was of the utmost importance to our common safety 
 to clear it up. I examined the sides of the descent, and found 
 that I could venture to trust myself to the irregular projec- 
 tions or ledges, at least for some way. I left the cage, and 
 clambered down. As I drew near and nearer to the light, the 
 chasm became wider, and at last I saw, to my unspeakable 
 amaze, a broad level road at the bottom of the abyss, illumined 
 as far as the eye could reach by what seemed artificial gas- 
 lamps placed at regular intervals, as in the thoroughfare of a 
 great city; and I heard confusedly at a distance a hum as of 
 human voices. I know, of course, that no rival miners are at 
 work in this district. Whose could be those voices? What 
 human hands could have levelled that road and marshalled 
 those lamps? 
 
 " The superstitious belief, common to miners, that gnomes 
 or fiends dwell within the bowels of the earth, began to seize 
 me. I shuddered at the thought of descending farther and 
 braving the inhabitants of this nether valley. Nor indeed 
 could I have done so without ropes, as from the spot I had 
 reached to the bottom of the chasm the sides of the rock sank 
 down abrupt, smooth, and sheer. I retraced my steps with 
 some difiiculty. Now I have told you all." 
 
 "You will descend again? " 
 
 "I ought, yet I feel as if I durst not." 
 
 "A trusty companion halves the journey and doubles the 
 courage. I will go with you. We will provide ourselves with 
 ropes of suitable length and strength, and — pardon me — you 
 must not drink more to-night. Our hands and feet must be 
 steady and firm to-morrow." 
 
252 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 With the morning my friend's nerves were re-braced, and 
 Jie was not less excited by curiosity than myself. Perhaps 
 more ; for he evidently believed in his own story, and I felt 
 considerable doubt of it : not that he would have wilfully told 
 an untruth, but that I thought he must have been under one 
 of those hallucinations which seize on our fancy or our nerves 
 in solitary, unaccustomed places, and in which we give shape 
 to the formless and sound to the dumb. 
 
 We selected six veteran miners to watch our descent; and 
 as the cage held only one at a time, the engineer descended 
 first; and when he had gained the ledge at which he had be- 
 fore halted, the cage re-arose for me. I soon gained his side. 
 We had provided ourselves with a strong coil of rope. 
 
 The light struck on my sight as it had done the day before 
 on my friend's. The hollow through which it came sloped 
 diagonally; it seemed to me a diffused atmospheric light, not 
 like that from fire, but soft and silvery, as from a northern 
 star. Quitting the cage, we descended, one after the other, 
 easily enough, owing to the juts in the side, till we reached 
 the place at which my friend had previously halted, and 
 which was a projection just spacious enough to allow us to 
 stand abreast. From this spot the chasm widened rapidly, 
 like the lower end of a vast funnel, and I saw distinctly the 
 valley, the road, the lamps which my companion had de- 
 scribed. He had exaggerated nothing. I heard the sounds 
 he had heard, — a mingled indescribable hum as of voices and 
 a dull tramp as of feet. Straining my eye farther down, I 
 clearly beheld at a distance the outline of some large build- 
 ing. It could not be mere natural rock, — it was too sym- 
 metrical, with huge heavy Egyptian-like columns, and the 
 whole lighted as from within. I had about me a small 
 pocket-telescope, and by the aid of this I could distinguish, 
 near the building I mention, two forms which seemed human, 
 
THE COMING RACE. 253 
 
 though I could not be sure. At least they were living, for 
 they moved, and both vanished within the building. We 
 now proceeded to attach the end of the rope we had brought 
 with us to the ledge on which we stood, by the aid of clamps 
 and grappling-hooks, with which, as well as with necessary 
 tools, we were provided. 
 
 We were almost silent in our work. We toiled like men 
 afraid to speak to each other. One end of the rope being thus 
 apparently made firm to the ledge, the other, to which we 
 fastened a fragment of the rock, rested on the ground below, 
 a distance of some fifty feet. I was a younger and a more 
 active man than my companion, and having served on board 
 ship in my boyhood, this mode of transit was more familiar 
 to me than to him. In a whisper I claimed the precedence, 
 so that when I gained the ground I might serve to hold the 
 rope more steady for his descent. I got safely to the ground 
 beneath, and the engineer now began to lower himself. But 
 he had scarcely accomplished ten feet of the descent, when 
 the fastenings, which we had fancied so secure, gave way, or 
 rather the rock itself proved treacherous and crumbled beneath 
 the strain ; and the unhappy man was precipitated to the bot- 
 tom, falling just at my feet, and bringing down with his fall 
 splinters of the rock, one of which, fortunately but a small 
 one, struck and for the time stunned me. When I recovered 
 my senses I saw my companion an inanimate mass beside me, 
 life utterly extinct. While I was bending over his corpse in 
 grief and horror, I heard close at hand a strange sound be- 
 tween a snort and a hiss; and turning instinctively to the 
 quarter from which it came, I saw emerging from a dark fis- 
 sure in the rock a vast and terrible head, with open jaws and 
 dull, ghastly, hungry eyes, — the head of a monstrous reptile 
 resembling that of the crocodile or alligator, but infinitely 
 larger than the largest creature of that kind I had ever beheld 
 in my travels. I started to my feet and fled down the valley 
 at my utmost speed. I stopped at last, ashamed of my panic 
 and my flight, and returned to the spot on which I had left 
 the body of my friend. It was gone ; doubtless the monster 
 had already drawn it into its den and devoured it. The rope 
 
254 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 and the grappling-hooks still lay where they had fallen, but 
 they afforded me no chance of return; it was impossible to re- 
 attach them to the rock above, and the sides of the rock were 
 too sheer and smooth for human steps to clamber. I was 
 alone in this strange world, amidst the bowels of the earth. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Slowly and cautiously I went my solitary way down the 
 lamplit road and towards the large building I have de- 
 scribed. The road itself seemed like a great Alpine pass, 
 skirting rocky mountains, of which the one through whose 
 chasms I had descended formed a link. Deep below to the 
 left lay a vast valley, which presented to my astonished eye 
 the unmistakable evidences of art and culture. There were 
 fields covered with a strange vegetation, similar to none I 
 have seen above the earth; the colour of it not green, but 
 rather of a dull leaden hue or of a golden red. 
 
 There were lakes and rivulets which seemed to have been 
 curved into artificial banks ; some of pure water, others that 
 shone like pools of naphtha. At my right hand, ravines and 
 defiles opened amidst the rocks, with passes between, evi- 
 dently constructed by art, and bordered by trees resembling, 
 for the most part, gigantic ferns, with exquisite varieties of 
 feathery foliage, and stems like those of the palm-tree. 
 Others were more like the cane-plant, but taller, bearing 
 large clusters of flowers. Others, again, had the form of 
 enormous fungi, with short thick stems supporting a wide 
 dome-like roof, from which either rose or drooped long and 
 slender branches. The whole scene behind, before, and be- 
 side me, far as the eye could reach, was brilliant with innu- 
 merable lamps. The world without a sun was bright and 
 warm as an Italian landscape at noon, but the air less op- 
 pressive, the heat softer. Nor was the scene before me 
 void of signs of habitation. I could distinguish at a dis- 
 
THE COMING RACE. 255 
 
 tance, whether on the banks of lake or rivulet, or half-way 
 upon eminences, embedded amidst the vegetation, buildings 
 that must surely be the homes of men. I could even dis- 
 cover, though far off, forms that appeared to me human 
 moving amidst the landscape. As I paused to gaze, I saw 
 to the right, gliding quickly through the air, what appeared 
 a small boat, impelled by sails shaped like wings. It soon 
 passed out of sight, descending amidst the shades of a forest. 
 Eight above me there was no sky, but onl}^ a cavernous roof. 
 This roof grew higher and higher at the distance of the land- 
 scapes beyond, till it became imperceptible, as an atmosphere 
 of haze formed itself beneath. 
 
 Continuing my walk, I started — from a bush that resem- 
 bled a great tangle of seaweeds, interspersed with fern-like 
 shrubs and plants of large leafage shaped like that of the aloe 
 or prickly pear — a curious animal about the size and shape of 
 a deer. But as, after bounding away a few paces, it turned 
 round and gazed at me inquisitively, I perceived that it was 
 not like any species of deer now extant above the earth, but 
 it brought instantly to my recollection a plaster cast I had 
 seen in some museum of a variety of the elk stag, said to 
 have existed before the Deluge. The creature seemed tame 
 enough, and, after inspecting me a moment or two, began 
 to graze on the singular herbage around, undismayed and 
 careless. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I NOW came m full sight of the building. Yes, it had been 
 made by hands, and hollowed partly out of a great rock. I 
 should have supposed it at the first glance to have been of the 
 earliest form of Eygptian architecture. It was fronted by 
 huge columns, tapering upward from massive plinths, and 
 with capitals that, as I came nearer, I perceived to be more 
 ornamental and more fantastically graceful than Egyptian 
 architecture allows. As the Corinthian capital mimics the 
 
256 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 leaf of the acanthus, so the capitals of these columns imitated 
 the foliage of the vegetation neighbouring them, some aloe- 
 like, some fern-like. And now there came out of this build- 
 ing a form, human, — was it human? It stood on the broad 
 way and looked around, beheld me and approached. It came 
 within a few yards of me, and at the sight and presence of it 
 an indescribable awe and tremor seized me, rooting my feet to 
 the ground. It reminded me of symbolical images of Genius 
 or Demon that are seen on Etruscan vases or limned on the 
 walls of Eastern sepulchres, — images that borrow the outlines 
 of man, and are yet of another race. It was tall, not gigantic, 
 but tall as the tallest men below the height of giants. Its 
 chief covering seemed to me to be composed of large wings 
 folded over its breast and reaching to its knees ; the rest of its 
 attire was composed of an under tunic and leggings of some 
 thin hbrous material. It wore on its head a kind of tiara that 
 shone with jewels, and carried in its right hand a slender staff 
 of bright metal like polished steel. But the face! it was that 
 which inspired my awe and my terror. It was the face of 
 man, but yet of a type of man distinct from our known extant 
 races. The nearest approach to it in outline and expression 
 is the face of the sculptured sphinx, so regular in its calm, 
 intellectual, mysterious beauty. Its colour was peculiar, more 
 like that of the red man than any other variety of our species, 
 and yet different from it, — a richer and a softer hue, with 
 large black eyes, deep and brilliant, and brows arched as a 
 semicircle. The face was beardless; but a nameless some- 
 thing in the aspect, tranquil though the expression, and beau- 
 teous though the features, roused that instinct of danger which 
 the sight of a tiger or serpent arouses. I felt that this man- 
 like image was endowed with forces inimical to man. As it 
 drew near, a cold shudder came over me. I fell on my knees 
 and covered my face with my hands. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 257 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A VOICE accosted me — a very quiet and very musical key 
 of voice — ia a language of which I could not understand a 
 word, but it served to dispel my fear. I uncovered my face 
 and looked up. The stranger (I could scarcely bring myself 
 to call him man) surveyed me with an eye that seemed to read 
 the very depths of my heart. He then placed his left hand on 
 my forehead, and with the staff in his right gently touched 
 my shoulder. The effect of this double contact was magical. 
 In place of my former terror there passed into me a sense of 
 contentment, of joy, of confidence in myself and in the being 
 before me. I rose and spoke in my own language. He lis- 
 tened to me with apparent attention, but with a slight sur- 
 prise in his looks ; and shook his head, as if to signify that I 
 was not understood. He then took me by the hand and led 
 me in silence to the building. The entrance was open, — in- 
 deed, there was no door to it. We entered an immense hall, 
 lighted by the same kind of lustre as in the scene without, 
 but diffusing a fragrant odour. The floor was in large tessel- 
 lated blocks of precious metals, and partly covered with a sort 
 of mat-like carpeting. A strain of low music, above and 
 around, undulated a-s if from invisible instruments, seeming 
 to belong naturally to the place, just as the sound of murmur- 
 ing waters belongs to a rocky landscape, or the warble of 
 birds to vernal groves. 
 
 A figure, in a simpler garb than that of my guide, but of 
 similar fashion, was standing motionless near the threshold. 
 My guide touched it twice with his staff, and it put itself into 
 a rapid and gliding movement, skimming noiselessly over the 
 floor. Gazing on it, I then saw that it was no living form, but a 
 mechancial automaton. It might be two minutes after it van- 
 ished through a doorless opening, half screened by curtains at 
 the other end of the hall, when through the same opening ad- 
 vanced a boy of about twelve years old, with features closely 
 
 17 
 
258 THE COMIXG RACE. 
 
 resembling those of my guide, so that they seemed to me evi- 
 dently son and father. On seeing me the child uttered a cry, 
 and lifted a staff like that borne by my guide, as if in menace. 
 At a word from the elder he dropped it. The two then con- 
 versed for some moments, examining me while they spoke. 
 The child touched my garments, and stroked my face with 
 evident curiosity, uttering a sound like a laugh, but with an 
 hilarity more subdued than the mirth of our laughter. Pres- 
 ently the roof of the hall opened, and a platform descended, 
 seemingly constructed on the same principle as the "lifts" 
 used in hotels and warehouses for mounting from one story to 
 another. 
 
 The stranger placed himself and the child on the platform, 
 and motioned to me to do the same, which I did. We ascended 
 quickly and safely, and alighted in the midst of a corridor 
 with doorways on either side. 
 
 Through one of these doorways I was conducted into a 
 chamber fitted up with an Oriental splendour; the walls were 
 tessellated with spars and metals and uncut jewels ; cushions 
 and divans abounded; apertures as for windows, but unglazed, 
 were made in the chamber, opening to the floor; and as I 
 passed along I observed that these openings led into spacious 
 balconies, and commanded views of the illumined landscape 
 without. In cages suspended from the ceiling there were 
 birds of strange form and bright plumage, which at our en- 
 trance set up a chorus of song, modulated into tune, as is that 
 of our piping bullfinches. A delicious fragrance, from censers 
 of gold elaborately sculptured, filled the air. Several auto- 
 mata, like the one I had seen, stood dumb and motionless by 
 the walls. The stranger placed me beside him on a divan, 
 and again spoke to me, and again I spoke, but without the 
 least advance towards understanding each other. 
 
 But now I began to feel the effects of the blow I received 
 from the splinters of the falling rock more acutely than I had 
 done at first. 
 
 There came over me a sense of sickly faintness, accom- 
 panied with acute, lancinating pains in the head and neck. I 
 sank back on the seat, and strove in vain to stifle a groan. On 
 
THE COMING RACE. 259 
 
 this the child, who had hitherto seemed to eye me with dis- 
 trust or dislike, knelt by my side to support me; taking one 
 of my hands in both his own, he approached his lips to my 
 forehead, breathing on it softly. In a few moments my pain 
 ceased ; a drowsy, happy calm crept over me ; I fell asleep. 
 
 How long I remained in this state I know not, but when I 
 woke I felt perfectly restored. My eyes opened upon a group 
 of silent forms, seated around me in the gravity and quietude 
 of Orientals, — all more or less like the first stranger; the 
 same mantling wings, the same fashion of garment, the same 
 sphinx-like faces, with the deep dark eyes and red man's colour; 
 above all, the same type of race, — race akin to man's, but 
 infinitely stronger of form and grander of aspect, and inspiring 
 the same unutterable feeling of dread. Yet each countenance 
 was mild and tranquil, and even kindly in its expression ; and 
 strangely enough, it seemed to me that in this very calm and 
 benignity consisted the secret of the dread which the counte- 
 nances inspired. They seemed as void of the lines and shadows 
 which care and sorrow, and passion and sin, leave upon the 
 faces of men, as are the faces of sculptured gods, or as, in the 
 eyes of Christian mourners, seem the peaceful brows of 
 the dead. 
 
 I felt a warm hand on my shoulder; it was the child's. In 
 his eyes there was a sort of lofty pity and tenderness, such as 
 that with which we may gaze on some suffering bird or but- 
 terfly. I shrank from that touch, I shrank from that eye. I 
 was vaguely impressed with a belief that, had he so pleased, 
 that child could have killed me as easily as a man can kill a 
 bird or a butterfly. The child seemed pained at my repug- 
 nance, quitted me, and placed himself beside one of the win- 
 dows. The others continued to converse with each other in 
 a low tone, and by their glances towards me I could perceive 
 that I was the object of their conversation. One in especial 
 seemed to be urging some proposal affecting me on the being 
 whom I had first met, and this last by his gesture seemed 
 about to assent to it, when the child suddenly quitted his post 
 by the window, placed himself between me and the other 
 forms, as if in protection, and spoke quickly and eagerly. By 
 
260 THE COMIXG RACE. 
 
 some intuition or instinct I felt that the child I had before so 
 dreaded was pleading in my behalf. Ere he had ceased an- 
 other stranger entered the room. He appeared older than the 
 rest, though not old; his countenance, less smoothly serene 
 than theirs, though equally regular in its features, seemed to 
 nie to have more the touch of a humanity akin to my own. 
 He listened quietly to the words addressed to him, first by 
 my guide, next by two others of the group, and lastly by the 
 child: then turned towards myself, and addressed me, not by 
 words, but by signs and gestures. These I fancied that I per- 
 fectly understood, and I was not mistaken. I comprehended 
 that he inquired whence I came. I extended my arm and 
 pointed towards the road which had led me from the chasm in 
 the rock; then an idea seized me. I drew forth my pocket- 
 book, and sketched on one of its blank leaves a rough design 
 of the ledge of the rock, the rope, myself clinging to it ; then 
 of the cavernous rock below, the head of the reptile, the life- 
 less form of my friend. I gave this primitive kind of hiero- 
 glyph to my interrogator, who, after inspecting it gravely, 
 handed it to his next neighbour, and it thus passed round the 
 group. The being I had at first encountered then said a few 
 words, and the child, who approached and looked at my draw- 
 ing, nodded as if he comprehended its purport, and, returning 
 to the window, expanded the wings attached to his form, 
 shook them once or twice, and then launched himself into 
 space without. I started up in amaze, and hastened to the 
 window. The child was already in the air, buoyed on his 
 wings, which he did not flap to and fro as a bird does, but 
 which were elevated over his head, and seemed to bear him 
 steadily aloft without effort of his own. His flight seemed as 
 swift as any eagle's; and I observed that it was towards the 
 rock whence I had descended, of which the outline loomed 
 visible in the brilliant atmosphere. In a very few minutes 
 he returned, skimming through the opening from which he 
 had gone, and dropping on the floor the rope and grappling- 
 hooks I had left at the descent from the chasm. Some words 
 in a low tone passed between the beings present. One of the 
 group touched an automaton, which started forward and glided 
 
THE COMING RACE. 261 
 
 from the room; then the last comer, who had addressed me by 
 gestures, rose, took me by the hand, and led me into the cor- 
 ridor. There the platform by which I had mounted awaited 
 us; we placed ourselves on it, and were lowered into the hall 
 below. My new companion, still holding me by the hand, 
 conducted me from the building into a street (so to speak) 
 that stretched beyond it, with buildings on either side, sepa- 
 rated from each other by gardens bright with rich-coloured 
 A'egetation and strange flowers. Interspersed amidst these 
 gardens, which were divided from each other by low walls, 
 or walking slowly along the road, were many forms similar to 
 those I had already seen. Some of the passers-by, on observ- 
 ing me, approached my guide, evidently by their tones, looks, 
 and gestures addressing to him inquiries about myself. In 
 a few moments a crowd collected round us, examining me with 
 great interest, as if I were some rare wild animal. Yet even 
 in gratifying their curiosity they preserved a grave and cour- 
 teous demeanour; and after a few words from my guide, who 
 seemed to me to deprecate obstruction in our road, they fell 
 back with a stately inclination of head, and resumed their 
 own way with tranquil indifference. Midway in this thor- 
 oughfare we stopped at a building that differed from those we 
 had hitherto passed, inasmuch as it formed three sides of a 
 vast court, at the angles of which were lofty pyramidal towers; 
 in the open space between the sides was a circular fountain of 
 colossal dimensions, and throwing up a dazzling spray of what 
 seemed to me fire. We entered the building through an open 
 doorway and came into an enormous hall, in which were sev- 
 eral groups of children, all apparently employed in work as at 
 some great factory. There was a huge engine in the wall 
 which was in full play, with wheels and cylinders, and resem- 
 bling our own steam-engines, except that it was richly orna- 
 mented with precious stones and metals, and appeared to emit 
 a pale phosphorescent atmosphere of shifting light. Many of 
 the children were at some mysterious work on this machinery, 
 others were seated before tables. I was not allowed to linger 
 long enough to examine into the nature of their employment. 
 Not one young voice was heard, not one young face turned to 
 
262 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 gaze on us. They were all still and indifferent as may be 
 ghosts, through the midst of which pass unnoticed the forms 
 of the living. 
 
 Quitting this hall, my guide led me through a gallery richly 
 painted in compartments, with a barbaric mixture of gold in 
 the colours, like pictures by Louis Cranach. The subjects 
 described on these walls appeared to my glance as intended to 
 illustrate events in the history of the race amidst which I was 
 admitted. In all there were figures, most of them like the 
 manlike creatures I had seen, but not all in the same fashion 
 of garb, nor all with wings. There were also the effigies of 
 various animals and birds wholly strange to me, with back- 
 grounds depicting landscapes or buildings. So far as my im- 
 perfect knowledge of the pictorial art would allow me to form 
 an opinion, these paintings seemed very accurate in design 
 and very rich in colouring, showing a perfect knowledge of 
 perspective, but their details not arranged according to the 
 rules of composition acknowledged by our artists, — wanting, 
 as it were, a centre; so that the effect was vague, scattered, 
 confused, bewildering; they were like heterogeneous frag- 
 ments of a dream of art. 
 
 We now came into a room of moderate size, in which was 
 assembled what I afterwards knew to be the family of my 
 guide, seated at a table spread as for repast. The forms thus 
 grouped were those of my guide's wife, his daughter, and two 
 sons. I recognized at once the difference between the two 
 sexes, though the two females were of taller stature and am- 
 pler proportions than the males; and their countenances, if 
 still more symmetrical in outline and contour, were devoid of 
 the softness and timidity of expression which give charm to 
 the face of woman as seen on the earth above. The wife wore 
 no wings, the daughter wore wings longer than those of the 
 males. 
 
 My guide uttered a few words, on which all the persons 
 seated rose, and with that peculiar mildness of look and man- 
 ner which I have before noticed, and which is, in truth, the 
 common attribute of this formidable race, they saluted me ac- 
 cording to their fashion, which consists in laying the right 
 
THE COMING RACE. 263 
 
 hand very gently on the head and uttering a soft sibilant 
 monosyllable, — S. Si, equivalent to "Welcome." 
 
 The mistress of the house then seated me beside her, and 
 heaped a golden platter before me from one of the dishes. 
 
 While I ate (and though the viands were new to me, I mar- 
 velled more at the delicacy than the strangeness of their fla- 
 vour), my companions conversed quietly, and, so far as I 
 could detect, with polite avoidance of any direct reference to 
 myself, or any obtrusive scrutiny of my appearance. Yet I 
 was the first creature of that variety of the human race to 
 which I belong that they had ever beheld, and was conse- 
 quently regarded by them as a most curious and abnormal 
 phenomenon. But all rudeness is unknown to this people, 
 and the youngest child is taught to despise any vehement 
 emotional demonstration. When the meal was ended, my 
 guide again took me by the hand, and, re-entering the gal- 
 lery, touched a metallic plate inscribed with strange figures, 
 and which I rightly conjectured to be of the nature of our 
 telegraphs. A platform descended, but this time we mounted 
 to a much greater height than in the former building, and 
 found ourselves in a room of moderate dimensions, and which 
 in its general character had much that might be familiar to 
 the associations of a visitor from the upper world. There 
 were shelves on the wall containing what appeared to be 
 books, and indeed were so; mostly very small, like our dia- 
 mond duodecimos, shaped in the fashion of our volumes, and 
 bound in fine sheets of metal. There were several curious- 
 looking pieces of mechanism scattered about, apparently 
 models, such as might be seen in the study of any profes- 
 sional mechanician. Four automata (mechanical contrivances 
 which, with these people, answer the ordinary purposes of 
 domestic service) stood phantom-like at each angle in the 
 wall. In a recess was a low couch, or bed with pillows. A 
 window, with curtains of some fibrous material drawn aside, 
 opened upon a large balcony. My host stepped out into the 
 balcony; I followed him. We were on the uppermost story 
 of one of the angular pyramids; the view beyond was of a 
 wild and solemn beauty impossible to describe, — the vast 
 
264 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 ranges of precipitous rock which formed the distant back- 
 ground; the intermediate valleys of mystic many-coloured 
 herbage; the flash of waters, many of them like streams of 
 roseate flame; the serene lustre diffused over all by myriads 
 of lamps, combined to form a whole of which no words of 
 mine can convey adequate description, — so splendid was it, 
 yet so sombre; so lovely, yet so awful. 
 
 But my attention was soon diverted from these nether 
 landscapes. Suddenly there arose, as from the streets below, 
 a burst of joyous music; then a winged form soared into the 
 space; another, as in chase of the first, another and another; 
 others after others, till the crowd grew thick and the number 
 countless. But how describe the fantastic grace of these 
 forms in their undulating movements ! They appeared engaged 
 in some sport or amusement, now forming into opposite squad- 
 rons; now scattering; now each group threading the other, 
 soaring, descending, interweaving, severing, — all in measured 
 time to the music below, as if in the dance of the fabled Peri. 
 
 I turned my gaze on my host in a feverish wonder. I ven- 
 tured to place my hand on the large wings that lay folded on 
 his breast, and in doing so a slight shock as of electricity 
 passed through me. I recoiled in fear; my host smiled, and, 
 as if courteously to gratify my curiosity, slowly expanded his 
 pinions. I observed that his garment beneath then became 
 dilated as a bladder that fills with air. The arms seemed to 
 slide into the wings, and in another moment he had launched 
 himself into the luminous atmosphere, and hovered there, 
 still, and with outspread wings, as an eagle that basks in the 
 sun. Then, rapidly as an eagle swoops, he rushed downwards 
 into the midst of one of the groups, skimming through the 
 mist, and as suddenly again soaring aloft. Thereon, three 
 forms, in one of which I thought to recognize my host's 
 daughter, detached themselves from the rest, and followed 
 him as a bird sportively follows a bird. My eyes, dazzled 
 with the lights and bewildered by the throngs, ceased to dis- 
 tinguish the gyrations and evolutions of these winged play- 
 mates, till presently my host re-emerged from the crowd and 
 alighted at my side. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 265 
 
 The strangeness of all I had seen began now to operate fast 
 on my senses ; my mind itself began to wander. Though not 
 inclined to be superstitious, nor hitherto believing that man 
 could be brought into bodily communication with demons, I 
 felt the terror and the wild excitement with which, in the 
 Gothic ages, a traveller might have persuaded himself that he 
 witnessed a sabbat of fiends and witches. I have a vague rec- 
 ollection of having attempted with vehement gesticulation, 
 and forms of exorcism, and loud incoherent words, to repel 
 my courteous and indulgent host; of his mild endeavours to 
 calm and soothe me; of his intelligent conjecture that my 
 fright and bewilderment were occasioned by the difference of 
 form and movement between us, which the wings that had ex- 
 cited my marvelling curiosity had, in exercise, made still 
 more strongly perceptible; of the gentle smile with which 
 he had sought to dispel my alarm by dropping the wings to 
 the ground and endeavouring to show me that they were but 
 a mechanical contrivance. That sudden transformation did 
 but increase my horror, and as extreme fright often shows it- 
 self by extreme daring, I sprang at his throat like a wild 
 beast. On an instant I was felled to the ground as by an 
 electric shock, and the last confused images floating before 
 my sight ere I became wholly insensible were the form of my 
 host kneeling beside me with one hand on my forehead, and 
 the beautiful calm face of his daughter, with large, deep, in- 
 scrutable eyes intently fixed upon my own. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 I REMAINED In this unconscious state, as I afterwards 
 learned, for many days, even for some weeks, according to 
 our computation of time. "When I recovered I was in a 
 strange room, my host and all his family were gathered round 
 me, and to my utter amaze my host's daughter accosted me in 
 my own language with but a slightly foreign accent. 
 
266 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 "How do you feel? " she asked. 
 
 It was some moments before I could overcome my surprise 
 enough to falter out, "You know my language? How? AYho 
 and what are you? " 
 
 My host smiled, and motioned to one of his sons, who then 
 took from a table a number of thin metallic sheets on which 
 were traced drawings of various figures, — a house, a tree, a 
 bird, a man, etc. 
 
 In these designs I recognized my own style of drawing. 
 Under each figure was written the name of it in my language, 
 and in my writing; and in another handwriting a word strange 
 to me beneath it. 
 
 Said the host, "Thus we began; and my daughter Zee, who 
 belongs to the College of Sages, has been your instructress 
 and ours too." 
 
 Zee then placed before me other metallic sheets, on which, 
 in my writing, words first, and then sentences, were inscribed; 
 under each word and each sentence strange characters in an- 
 other hand. Eallying my senses, I comprehended that thus a 
 rude dictionary had been effected. Had it been done while I 
 was dreaming? "That is enough now," said Zee, in a tone of 
 command. "Eepose and take food." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A ROOM to myself was assigned to me in this vast edifice. 
 It was prettily and fantastically arranged, but without any of 
 the splendour of metal work or gems which was displayed in 
 the more public apartments. The walls were hung with a 
 variegated matting made from the stalks and fibres of plants, 
 and the floor carpeted with the same. 
 
 The bed was without curtains, its supports of iron resting 
 on balls of crystal; the coverings, of a thin white substance 
 resembling cotton. There were sundry shelves containing 
 
THE COMING RxVCE. 267 
 
 books. A curtained recess communicated with an aviary 
 filled with singing-birds, of which I did not recognize one 
 resembling those I have seen on earth, except a beautiful spe- 
 cies of dove, though this was distinguished from our doves by 
 a tall crest of bluish plumes. All these birds had been trained 
 to sing in artful tunes, and greatly exceeded the skill of our 
 piping bullfinches, which can rarely achieve more than two 
 tunes, and cannot, I believe, sing those in concert. One might 
 have supposed one's self at an opera in listening to the voices 
 in my aviary. There were duets and trios, and quartettes and 
 choruses, all arranged as in one piece of music. Did I want to 
 silence the birds? I had but to draw a curtain over the aviary, 
 and their song hushed as they found themselves left in the 
 dark. Another opening formed a window, not glazed, but on 
 touching a spring, a shutter ascended from the floor, formed 
 of some substance less transparent than glass, but still suffi- 
 ciently pellucid to allow a softened view of the scene without. 
 To this window was attached a balcony, or rather hanging- 
 garden, wherein grew many graceful plants and brilliant 
 flowers. The apartment and its appurtenances had thus a 
 character, if strange in detail, still familiar, as a whole, to 
 modern notions of luxury, and would have excited admiration 
 if found attached to the apartments of an English duchess or 
 a fashionable French author. Before I arrived this was Zee's 
 chamber; she had hospitably assigned it to me. 
 
 Some hours after the waking up which is described in my 
 last chapter, I was lying alone on my couch, trying to fix my 
 thoughts on conjecture as to the nature and genus of the 
 people amongst whom I was thrown, when my host and his 
 daughter Zee entered the room. My host, still speaking my 
 native language, inquired, with much politeness, whether it 
 would be agreeable to me to converse, or if I preferred soli- 
 tude. I replied that I should feel much honoured and obliged 
 by the opportunity offered me to express my gratitude for the 
 hospitality and civilities I had received in a country to which 
 I was a stranger, and to learn enough of its customs and man- 
 ners not to offend through ignorance. 
 
 As I spoke, I had of course risen from my couch ; but Zee, 
 
268 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 much to my confusion, curtly ordered me to lie down again, 
 and there was something in her voice and eye, gentle as both 
 were, that compelled my obedience. She then seated herself 
 unconcernedly at the foot of my bed, while her father took his 
 place on a divan a few feet distant. 
 
 "But what part of the world do you come from," asked my 
 host, "that we should appear so strange to you, and you to 
 us? I have seen individual specimens of nearly all the races 
 differing from our own, except the primeval savages who 
 dwell in the most desolate and remote recesses of unculti- 
 vated nature, unacquainted with other light than that they 
 obtain from volcanic fires, and contented to grope their way 
 in the dark, as do many creeping, crawling, and even flying 
 things. But certainly you cannot be a member of those bar- 
 barous tribes, nor, on the other hand, do you seem to belong 
 to any civilized people." 
 
 I was somewhat nettled at this last observation, and replied 
 that I had the honour to belong to one of the most civilized 
 nations of the earth ; and that, so far as light was concerned, 
 while I admired the ingenuity and disregard of expense with 
 which my host and his fellow-citizens had contrived to illu- 
 mine the regions unpenetrated by the rays of the sun, yet I 
 could not conceive how any who had once beheld the orbs of 
 heaven could compare to their lustre the artificial lights in- 
 vented by the necessities of man. But my host said he had 
 seen specimens of most of the races differing from his own, 
 save the wretched barbarians he had mentioned. Now, was 
 it possible that he had never been on the surface of the earth, 
 or could he only be referring to communities buried within 
 its entrails? 
 
 My host was for some moments silent; his countenance 
 showed a degree of surprise which the people of that race 
 very rarely manifest under any circumstances, howsoever ex- 
 traordinary. But Zee was more intelligent, and exclaimed, 
 " So you see, my father, that there is truth in the old tradi- 
 tion; there always is truth in every tradition commonly be- 
 lieved in all times and by all tribes." 
 
 "Zee," said my host, mildly, "you belong to the College of 
 
THE COMING RACE. 2G9 
 
 Sages, and ought to be wiser than I am; but, as chief of the 
 Light-preserving Council, it is ray duty to take nothing for 
 granted till it is proved to the evidence of my own senses." 
 Then, turning to me, he asked me several questions about the 
 surface of the earth and the heavenly bodies; upon which, 
 though I answered him to the best of my knowledge, my an- 
 swers seemed not to satisfy nor convince him. He shook his 
 head quietly, and, changing the subject rather abruptly, asked 
 how I had come down from what he was pleased to call one 
 world to the other. I answered that under the surface of the 
 earth there were mines containing minerals, or metals, essen- 
 tial to our wants and our progress in all arts and industries; 
 and I then briefly explained the manner in which, while ex- 
 ploring one of these mines, I and my ill-fated friend had ob- 
 tained a glimpse of the regions into which we had descended, 
 and how the descent had cost him his life, — appealing to the 
 rope and grappling-hooks that the child had brought to the 
 house in which I had been at first received, as a witness of 
 the truthfulness of my story. 
 
 My host then proceeded to question me as to the habits and 
 modes of life among the races on the upper earth, more especi- 
 ally among those considered to be the most advanced in that 
 civilization which he was pleased to define "the art of diffus- 
 ing throughout a community the tranquil happiness which be- 
 longs to a virtuous and well-ordered household." Naturally 
 desiring to represent in the most favourable colours the world 
 from which I came, I touched but slightly, though indul- 
 gently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, 
 in order to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective 
 pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which 
 Europe enviously seeks its model and tremblingly foresees 
 its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of 
 the United States that city in which progress advances at the 
 fastest rate, I indulged in an animated description of the 
 moral habits of New York. Mortified to see, by the faces of 
 my listeners, that I did not make the favourable impression I 
 had anticipated, I elevated my theme, dwelling on the excel- 
 lence of democratic institutions, their promotion of tranquil 
 
270 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 happiness by tlie government of party, and the mode in which 
 they diffused such happiness throughout the community by 
 preferring, for the exercise of power and the acquisition of 
 honours, the lowliest citizens in point of property, education, 
 and character. Fortunately recollecting the peroration of a 
 speech, on the purifying iniluences of American democracy 
 and their destined spread over the world, made by a certain 
 eloquent senator (for whose vote in the Senate a Railway 
 Company, to which my two brothers belonged, had just paid 
 twenty thousand dollars), I wound up by repeating its glow- 
 ing predictions of the magnificent future that smiled upon 
 mankind, — when the flag of freedom should float over an en- 
 tire continent, and two hundred millions of intelligent citi- 
 zens, accustomed from infancy to the daily use of revolvers, 
 should apply to a cowering universe the doctrine of the Patriot 
 Monroe. 
 
 When I had concluded my host gently shook his head, and 
 fell into a musing study, making a sign to me and his daugh- 
 ter to remain silent while he reflected ; and after a time he 
 said, in a very earnest and solemn tone, " If you think as you 
 say, that you, though a stranger, have received kindness at 
 the hands of me and mine, I adjure you to reveal nothing to 
 any other of our people respecting the world from which you 
 came, unless, on consideration, I give you permission to do 
 so. Do you consent to this request? " 
 
 "Of course I pledge my word to it," said I, somewhat 
 amazed; and I extended my right hand to grasp his. But he 
 placed my hand gently on his forehead and his own right hand 
 on my breast, which is the custom among this race in all mat- 
 ters of promise or verbal obligations. Then turning to his 
 daughter, he said, " And you. Zee, will not repeat to any one 
 what the stranger has said, or may say, to me or to you, of a 
 world other than our own." Zee rose and kissed her father 
 on the temples, saying, with a smile, "A Gy's tongue is wan- 
 ton, but love can fetter it fast; and if, my father, you fear 
 lest a chance word from me or yourself could expose our com- 
 munity to danger, by a desire to explore a world beyond us, 
 will not a wave of the vrll, properly impelled, wash even the 
 
THE COMING RACE. 271 
 
 memory of what we have heard the stranger say out of the 
 tablets of the brain?" 
 
 "What is vril?" I asked. 
 
 Therewith Zee began to enter into an explanation of which 
 I understood very little, for there is no word in any language 
 I know which is an exact synonym for vril. I should call it 
 electricity, except that it comprehends in its manifold branches 
 other forces of nature, to which, in our scientific nomenclature, 
 differing names are assigned, such as magnetism, galvanism, 
 etc. These people consider that in vril they have arrived 
 at the unity in natural energetic agencies, which has been 
 conjectured by many philosophers above ground, and which 
 Faraday thus intimates under the more cautious terra of 
 " correlation " : — 
 
 " I have long held an opinion," says that illustrious experimentalist, 
 "almost amounting to a conviction, in common, I believe, with many 
 other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which 
 the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin ; or, in 
 other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they 
 are convertible, as it were, into one another, and possess equivalents of 
 power in their action." 
 
 These subterranean philosophers assert that, by one opera- 
 tion of vril, which Faraday would perhaps call "atmospheric 
 magnetism," they can influence the variations of temperature, 
 — in plain words, the weather ; that by other operations, akin 
 to those ascribed to mesmerism, electro-biology, odic force, 
 etc., but applied scientifically through vril conductors, they 
 can exercise influence over minds, and bodies- animal and 
 vegetable, to an extent not surpassed in the romances of our 
 mystics. To all such agencies they give the common name of 
 "vril." Zee asked me if, in my world, it was not known that 
 all the faculties of the mind could be quickened to a degree 
 unknown in the waking state, by trance or vision, in which 
 the thoughts of one brain could be transmitted to another, and 
 knowledge be thus rapidly interchanged. I replied that there 
 were among us stories told of such trance or vision, and that 
 I had heard much and seen something of the mode in which 
 they were artificially effected, as in mesmeric clairvoyance; 
 
272 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 but tliat tliese practices had fallen much into disuse or con- 
 tempt, partly because of the gross impostures to which they 
 had been made subservient, and partly because, even where 
 the effects upon certain abnormal constitutions were genuinely 
 produced, the effects, when fairly examined and analyzed, 
 were very unsatisfactory, — not to be relied upon for any sys- 
 tematic truthfulness or any practical purpose, and rendered 
 very mischievous to credulous persons by the superstitions 
 they tended to produce. Zee received my answers with much 
 benignant attention, and said that similar instances of abuse 
 and credulity had been familiar to their own scientific ex- 
 perience in the infancy of their knowledge and while the 
 properties of vril were misapprehended, but that she reserved 
 further discussion on this subject till I was more fitted to en- 
 ter into it. She contented herself with adding that it was 
 through the agency of vril, while I had been placed in the state 
 of trance, that I had been made acquainted with the rudiments 
 of their language ; and that she and her father, who, alone of 
 the family, took the pains to watch the experiment, had ac- 
 quired a greater proportionate knowledge of my language than 
 I of their own, — partly because my language was much sim- 
 pler than theirs, comprising far less of complex ideas; and 
 partly because their organization was, by hereditary culture, 
 much more ductile and more readily capable of acquiring 
 knowledge than mine. At this I secretly demurred ; and hav- 
 ing had, in the course of a practical life, to sharpen my wits, 
 whether at home or in travel, I could not allow that my cere- 
 bral organization could possibly be duller than that of people 
 who had lived all their lives by lamplight. However, while 
 I was thus thinking. Zee quietly pointed her forefinger at my 
 forehead and sent me to sleep. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 273 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 When I once more awoke I saw by my bedside the child 
 who had brought the rope and grappling-hooks to the house 
 in which I had been first received, and which, as I afterwards 
 learned, was the residence of the chief magistrate of the tribe. 
 The child, whose name was Tae (pronounced Tar-ee), was the 
 magistrate's eldest son. I found that during my last sleep or 
 trance I had made still greater advance in the language of 
 the country, and could converse with comparative ease and 
 fluency. 
 
 This child was singularly handsome, even for the beautiful 
 race to which he belonged, with a countenance very manly in 
 aspect for his years, and with a more vivacious and energetic 
 expression than I had hitherto seen in the serene and passion- 
 less faces of the men. He brought me the tablet on which I 
 had drawn the mode of my descent, and had also sketched the 
 head of the horrible reptile that had scared me from my 
 friend's corpse. Pointing to that part of the drawing, Tae 
 put to me a few questions respecting the size and form of the 
 monster, and the cave or chasm from which it had emerged. 
 His interest in my answers seemed so grave as to divert him 
 for a while from any curiosity as to myself or my antecedents ; 
 but to my great embarrassment, seeing how I was pledged to 
 my host, he was just beginning to ask me where I came from, 
 when Zee fortunately entered, and, overhearing him, said, 
 "Tae, give to our guest any information he may desire, but 
 ask none from him in return. To question him who he is, 
 whence he comes, or wherefore he is here, would be a breach 
 of the law which my father has laid down for this house." 
 
 "So be it," said Tae, pressing his hand to his heart; and 
 from that moment till the one in which I saw him last, this 
 child, with whom I became very intimate, never once put to 
 me any of the questions thus interdicted. 
 
 18 
 
274 THE COMING KACE. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 It was not for some time, and until, by repeated trances, if 
 they are so to be called, my mind became better prepared to 
 interchange ideas witli my entertainers, and more fully to 
 comprehend differences of manners and customs, at first too 
 strange to my experience to be seized by my reason, that I 
 was enabled to gather the following details respecting the 
 origin and history of this subterranean population, as portion 
 of one great family race called the " Ana. " 
 
 According to the earliest traditions, the remote progenitors 
 of the race had once tenanted a world above the surface of 
 that in which their descendants dwelt. Myths of that world 
 were still preserved in their archives, and in those myths 
 were legends of a vaulted dome in which the lamps were 
 lighted by no human hand; but such legends were considered 
 by most commentators as allegorical fables. According to 
 these traditions the earth itself, at the date to which the tra- 
 ditions ascend, was not indeed in its infancy, but in the 
 throes and travail of transition from one form of development 
 to another, and subject to many violent revolutions of nature. 
 By one of such revolutions, that portion of the upper world 
 inhabited by the ancestors of this race bad been subjected to 
 inundations, not rapid, but gradual and uncontrollable, in 
 which all, save a scanty remnant, were submerged and per- 
 ished. Whether this be a record of our historical and sacred 
 Deluge, or of some earlier one contended for by geologists, I 
 do not pretend to conjecture ; though, according to the chro- 
 nology of this people as compared with that of Newton, it 
 must have been many thousands of years before the time of 
 Noah. On the other hand, the account of these writers does 
 not harmonize with the opinions most in vogue among geologi- 
 cal authorities, inasmuch as it places the existence of a human 
 race upon earth at dates long anterior to that assigned to the 
 
THE COMING RACE. 275 
 
 terrestrial formation adapted to the introduction of mammalia. 
 A band of the ill-fated race, thus invaded by the Flood, had, 
 during the march of the waters, taken refuge in caverns amidst 
 the loftier rocks, and, wandering through these hollows, they 
 lost sight of the upper world forever. Indeed, the whole face 
 of the earth had been changed by this great revulsion; land 
 had been turned into sea, sea into land. In the bowels of the 
 inner earth even now, I was informed as a positive fact, might 
 be discovered the remains of human habitation, — habitation 
 not in huts and caverns, but in vast cities whose ruins attest 
 the civilization of races which flourished before the age of 
 Noah, and are not to be classified with those genera to which 
 philosophy ascribes the use of flint and the ignorance of iron. 
 
 The fugitives had carried with them the knowledge of the 
 arts they had practised above ground, — arts of culture and 
 civilization. Their earliest want must have been that of sup- 
 plying below the earth the light they had lost above it; and at 
 no time, even in the traditional period, do the races, of which 
 the one I now sojourned with formed a tribe, seem to have 
 been unacquainted with the art of extracting light from gases 
 or manganese or petroleum. They had been accustomed in 
 their former state to contend with the rude forces of nature; 
 and indeed the lengthened battle they had fought with their 
 conqueror Ocean, which had taken centuries in its spread, 
 had quickened their skill in curbing waters into dikes and 
 channels. To this skill they owed their preservation in their 
 new abode. "For many generations," said my host, with a 
 sort of contempt and horror, "these primitive forefathers are 
 said to have degraded their rank and shortened their lives by 
 eating the flesh of animals, many varieties of which had, like 
 themselves, escaped the Deluge, and sought shelter in the 
 hollows of the earth ; other animals, supposed to be unknown 
 to the upper world, those hollows themselves produced." 
 
 When what we should term the historical age emerged from 
 the twilight of tradition, the Ana were already established in 
 different communities, and had attained to a degree of civiliza- 
 tion very analogous to that which the more advanced nations 
 above the earth now enjoy. They were familiar with most of 
 
276 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 our mechanical inventions, including the application of steam 
 as well as gas. The communities were in fierce competition 
 with each other. They had their rich and their poor; they 
 had orators and conquerors ; they made war either for a do- 
 main or an idea. Though the various States acknowledged 
 various forms of government, free institutions were beginning 
 to preponderate; popular assemblies increased in power; re- 
 publics soon became general; the democracy to which the 
 most enlightened European politicians look forward as the 
 extreme goal of political advancement, and which still pre- 
 vailed among other subterranean races, whom they despised 
 as barbarians, the loftier family of Ana, to which belonged 
 the tribe I was visiting, looked back to as one of the crude 
 and ignorant experiments which belong to the infancy of 
 political science. It was the age of envy and hate, of fierce 
 passions, of constant social changes more or less violent, of 
 strife between classes, of war between State and State. This 
 phase of society lasted, however, for some ages, and was fi- 
 nally brought to a close, at least among the nobler and more 
 intellectual populations, by the gradual discovery of the latent 
 powers stored in the all-permeating fluid which they denominate 
 "Vril." 
 
 According to the account I received from Zee, who, as an 
 erudite professor in the College of Sages, had studied such 
 matters more diligently than any other member of my host's 
 family, this fluid is capable of being raised and disciplined 
 into the mightiest agency over all forms of matter, animate 
 or inanimate. It can destroy like the flash of lightning; yet, 
 differently applied, it can replenish or invigorate life, heal, 
 and preserve; and on it they chiefly rely for the cure of dis- 
 ease, or rather for enabling the physical organization to re- 
 establish the due equilibrium of its natural powers, and 
 thereby to cure itself. By this agency they rend way through 
 the most solid substances, and open valleys for culture through 
 the rocks of their subterranean wilderness. From it they ex- 
 tract the light which supplies their lamps, finding it steadier, 
 softer, and healthier than the other inflammable materials 
 they had formerly used. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 277 
 
 But the effects of the alleged discovery of the means to 
 direct the more terrible force of vril were chiefly remarkable 
 in their influence upon social polity. As these effects became 
 familiarly known and skilfully administered, war between the 
 Vril-discoverers ceased, for they brought the art of destruc- 
 tion to such perfection as to annul all superiority in numbers, 
 discipline, or military skill. The flre lodged in the hollow of 
 a rod directed by the hand of a child could shatter the strong- 
 est fortress, or cleave its burning way from the van to the 
 rear of an embattled host. If army met army, and both had 
 command of this agency, it could be but to the annihilation of 
 each. The age of war was therefore gone, but with the cessa- 
 tion of war other effects bearing upon the social state soon 
 became apparent. Man was so completely at the mercy of 
 man, each whom he encountered being able, if so willing, to 
 slay him on the instant, that all notions of government by 
 force gradually vanished from political systems and forms of 
 law. It is only by force that vast communities, dispersed 
 through great distances of space, can be kept together; but 
 now there was no longer either the necessity of self-preserva- 
 tion or the pride of aggrandizement to make one State desire 
 to preponderate in population over another. 
 
 The Vril-discoverers thus, in the course of a few genera- 
 tions, peacefully split into communities of moderate size. 
 The tribe amongst which I had fallen was limited to twelve 
 thousand families. Each tribe occupied a territory sufficient 
 for all its wants, and at stated periods the surplus population 
 departed to seek a realm of its own. There appeared no ne- 
 cessity for any arbitrary selection of these emigrants; there 
 was always a sufiicient number who volunteered to depart. 
 
 These subdivided States, petty if we regard either territory 
 or population, all appertained to one vast general family. 
 They spoke the same language, though the dialects might 
 slightly differ. They intermarried; they maintained the same 
 general laws and customs; and so important a bond between 
 these several communities was the knowledge of vril and the 
 practice of its agencies, that the word A- Vril was synonymous 
 with civilization; and Vril-ya, signifying "The Civilized Na- 
 
278 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 tions," was the common name by which the communities em- 
 ploying the uses of vril distinguished themselves from such 
 of the Ana as were yet in a state of barbarism. 
 
 The government of the tribe of Vril-ya I am treating of was 
 apparently very complicated, really very simple. It was based 
 upon a principle recognized in theory, though little carried 
 out in practice, above ground, — namely, that the object of all 
 systems of philosophical thought tends to the attainment of 
 unity, or the ascent through all intervening labyrinths to the 
 simplicity of a single first cause or principle. Thus in poli- 
 tics, even republican writers have agreed that a benevolent 
 autocracy would insure the best administration, if there were 
 any guarantees for its continuance, or against its gradual 
 abuse of the powers accorded to it. This singular community 
 elected therefore a single supreme magistrate styled "Tur; " 
 he held his office nominally for life, but he could seldom be 
 induced to retain it after the first approach of old age. There 
 was indeed in this society nothing to induce any of its mem- 
 bers to covet the cares of office. No honours, no insignia of 
 higher rank were assigned to it. The supreme magistrate was 
 not distinguished from the rest by superior habitation or rev- 
 enue. On the other hand, the duties awarded to him were 
 marvellously light and easy, requiring no preponderant de- 
 gree of energy or intelligence. There being no apprehensions 
 of war, there were no armies to maintain; being no govern- 
 ment of force, there was no police to appoint and direct. 
 What we call crime was utterly unknown to the Vril-ya; and 
 there were no courts of criminal justice. The rare instances 
 of civil disputes were referred for arbitration to friends chosen 
 by either party, or decided by the Council of Sages, which 
 will be described later. There were no professional lawyers; 
 and indeed their laws were but amicable conventions, for there 
 was no power to enforce laws against an offender who carried 
 in his staff the power to destroy his judges. There were cus- 
 toms and regulations to compliance with which, for several 
 ages, the people had tacitly habituated themselves ; or if in 
 any instance an individual felt such compliance hard, he 
 quitted the community and went elsewhere. There was, iu 
 
THE COMING RACE. 279 
 
 fact, quietly established amid this State much the same com- 
 pact that is found in our private families, in which we virtu- 
 ally say to any independent grown-up member of the family 
 whom we receive and entertain, " Stay or go, according as our 
 habits and regulations suit or displease you." But though 
 there were no laws such as we call laws, no race above ground 
 is so law-observing. Obedience to the rule adopted by the 
 community has become as much an instinct as if it were im- 
 planted by nature. Even in every household the head of it 
 makes a regulation for its guidance, which is never resisted 
 nor even cavilled at by those who belong to the family. They 
 have a proverb, the pithiness of which is much lost in this 
 paraphrase, "No happiness without order, no order without 
 authority, no authority without unity." The mildness of all 
 government among them, civil or domestic, may be signalized 
 by their idiomatic expressions for such terms as illegal or 
 forbidden, — namely, "It is requested not to do so-and-so." 
 Poverty among the Ana is as unknown as crime; not that 
 property is held in common, or that all are equals in the 
 extent of their possessions or the size and luxury of their 
 habitations : but there being no difference of rank or position 
 between the grades of wealth or the choice of occupations, 
 each pursues his own inclinations without creating envy or 
 vying; some like a modest, some a more splendid kind of life; 
 each makes himself happy in his own way. Owing to this 
 absence of competition, and the limit placed on the popula- 
 tion, it is difficult for a family to fall into distress ; there are 
 no hazardous speculations, no emulators striving for superior 
 wealth and rank. No doubt, in each settlement all originally 
 had the same proportions of land dealt out to them ; but some, 
 more adventurous than others, had extended their possessions 
 farther into the bordering wilds, or had improved into richer 
 fertility the produce of their fields, or entered into commerce 
 or trade. Thus, necessarily, some had grown richer than 
 others, but none had become absolutely poor, or wanting any- 
 thing which their tastes desired. If they did so, it was 
 always in their power to migrate, or at the worst to apply, 
 without shame and with certainty of aid, to the rich; for all 
 
280 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 the members of the community considered themselves as 
 brothers of one affectionate and united family. More upon 
 this head will be treated of incidentally as my narrative 
 proceeds. 
 
 The chief care of the supreme magistrate was to communi- 
 cate with certain active departments charged with the admin- 
 istration of special details. The most important and essential 
 of such details was that connected with the due provision of 
 light. Of this department my host, Aph-Lin, was the chief. 
 Another department, which might be called the foreign, com- 
 municated with the neighbouring kindred States, principally 
 for the purpose of ascertaining all new inventions ; and to a 
 third department, all such inventions and improvements in 
 machinery were committed for trial. Connected with this 
 department was the College of Sages, — a college especially 
 favoured by such of the Ana as were widowed and childless, 
 and by the young unmarried females, amongst whom Zee was 
 the most active, and, if what we call renown or distinction 
 was a thing acknowledged by this people (which I shall later 
 show it is not), among the most renowned or distinguished. 
 It is by the female Professors of this College that those studies 
 which are deemed of least use in practical life — as purely 
 speculative philosophy, the history of remote periods, and 
 such sciences as entomology, conchology, etc. — are the more 
 diligently cultivated. Zee, whose mind, active as Aristotle's, 
 equally embraced the largest domains and the minutest details 
 of thought, had written two volumes on the parasite insect 
 that dwells amid the hairs of a tiger's ^ paw, which work was 
 considered the best authority on that interesting subject. But 
 the researches of the sages are not confined to such subtle or 
 elegant studies. They comprise various others more impor- 
 
 1 The animal here referred to has many points of difference from the tiger 
 of the upper world. It is larger, and with a broader paw, and still more 
 receding frontal. It haunts the sides of lakes and pools, and feeds princi- 
 pally on fishes, though it does not object to any terrestrial animal of inferior 
 strength that comes in its way. It is becoming very scarce even in the wild 
 districts, where it is devoured by gigantic reptiles. I apprehend that it 
 clearly belongs to the tiger species, since the parasite animalcule found in its 
 paw, like that found in the Asiatic tiger's, is a miniature image of itself. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 281 
 
 taut, and especially the properties of vril, to the perception 
 of which their finer nervous organization renders the female 
 Professors eminently keen. It is out of this college that the 
 Tur, or chief magistrate, selects Councillors, limited to three, 
 in the rare instances in which novelty of event or circum- 
 stance perplexes his own judgment. 
 
 There are a few other departments of minor consequence, 
 but all are carried on so noiselessly and quietly that the evi- 
 dence of a government seems to vanish altogether, and social 
 order to be as regular and unobtrusive as if it were a law of 
 nature. Machinery is employed to an inconceivable extent 
 in all the operations of labour within and without doors, and 
 it is the unceasing object of the department charged with its 
 administration to extend its efficiency. There is no class of 
 labourers or servants, but all who are required to assist or 
 control the machinery are found in the children, from the 
 time they leave the care of their mothers to the marriageable 
 age, which they place at sixteen for the Gy-ei (the females), 
 twenty for the Ana (the males). These children are formed 
 into bands and sections under their own chiefs, each follow- 
 ing the pursuits in which he is most pleased, or for which he 
 feels himself most fitted. Some take to handicrafts, some to 
 agriculture, some to household work, and some to the only 
 services of danger to which the population is exposed; for 
 the sole perils that threaten this tribe are, first, from those 
 occasional convulsions within the earth, to foresee and guard 
 against which tasks their utmost ingenuity, — irruptions of 
 fire and water, the storms of subterranean winds and escaping 
 gases. At the borders of the domain, and at all places where 
 such peril might be apprehended, vigilant inspectors are sta- 
 tioned with telegraphic communication to the hall in which 
 chosen sages take it by turns to hold perpetual sittings. 
 These inspectors are always selected from the elder boys ap- 
 proaching the age of puberty, and on the principle that at 
 that age observation is more acute and the physical forces 
 more alert than at any other. The second service of danger, 
 less grave, is in the destruction of all creatures hostile to the 
 life, or the culture, or even the comfort, of the Ana. Of these 
 
282 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 the most formidable are the vast reptiles, of some of which 
 antediluvian relics are preserved in our museums, and certain 
 gigantic winged creatures, half bird, half reptile. These, to- 
 gether with lesser wild animals, corresponding to our tigers 
 or venomous serpents, it is left to the younger children to 
 hunt and destroy; because, according to the Ana, here ruth- 
 lessness is wanted, and the younger a child the more ruth- 
 lessly he will destroy. There is another class of animals in 
 the destruction of which discrimination is to be used, and 
 against which children of intermediate age are appointed, — 
 animals that do not threaten the life of man, but ravage the 
 produce of his labour, — varieties of the elk and deer species, 
 and a smaller creature much akin to our rabbit, though infi- 
 nitely more destructive to crops, and much more cunning in 
 its mode of depredation. It is the first object of these ap- 
 pointed infants to tame the more intelligent of such animals 
 into respect for enclosures signalized by conspicuous land- 
 marks, as dogs are taught to respect a larder, or even to guard 
 the master's property. It is only where such creatures are 
 found untamable to this extent that they are destroyed. 
 Life is never taken away for food or for sport, and never 
 spared where untamably inimical to the Ana. Concomitantly 
 with these bodily services and tasks, the mental education of 
 the children goes on till boyhood ceases. It is the general 
 custom, then, to pass through a course of instruction at the 
 College of Sages, in which, besides more general studies, the 
 pupil receives special lessons in such vocation or direction of 
 intellect as he himself selects. Some, however, prefer to 
 pass this period of probation in travel, or to emigrate, or to 
 settle down at once into rural or commercial pursuits. Ko 
 force is put upon individual inclination. 
 
THE COMING llACE. 283 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The word Ana (pronounced broadly Arjia) corresponds 
 with our plural men; An (pronounced Am), the singular, 
 with man. The word for woman is Gy (pronounced hard, as 
 in Guy); it forms itself into Gy-ei for the plural, but the G 
 becomes soft in the plural, like Jy-ei. They have a proverb 
 to the effect that this difference in pronunciation is symboli- 
 cal, for that the female sex is soft collectively, but hard to 
 deal with in the individual. The Gy-ei are in the fullest en- 
 joyment of all the rights of equality with males, for which 
 certain philosophers above ground contend. 
 
 In childhood they perform the offices of work and labour 
 impartially with boys; and, indeed, in the earlier age appro- 
 priated to the destruction of animals irreclaimably hostile, 
 the girls are frequently preferred, as being by constitution 
 more ruthless under the influence of fear or hate. In the in- 
 terval between infancy and the marriageable age familiar 
 intercourse between the sexes is suspended. At the marriage- 
 able age it is renewed, never with worse consequences than 
 those which attend upon marriage. All arts and vocations 
 allotted to the one sex are open to the other, and the Gy-ei 
 arrogate to themselves a superiority in all those abstruse and 
 mystical branches of reasoning, for which they say the Ana 
 are unfitted by a duller sobriety of understanding, or the 
 routine of their matter-of-fact occupations, just as young 
 ladies in our own world constitute themselves authorities in 
 the subtlest points of theological doctrine, for which few men, 
 actively engaged in worldly business, have sufficient learning 
 or refinement of intellect. Whether owing to early training 
 in gymnastic exercises, or to their constitutional organization, 
 the Gy-ei are usually superior to the Ana in physical strength 
 (an important element in the consideration and maintenance 
 of female rights). They attain to loftier stature, and amid 
 
284 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 their rounder proportions are embedded sinews and muscles 
 as hardy as those of the other sex. Indeed they assert that, 
 according to the original laws of nature, females were in- 
 tended to be larger than males, and maintain this dogma by 
 reference to the earliest formations of life in insects, and in 
 the most ancient family of the vertebrata, — namely, fishes, — 
 in both of which the females are generally large enough to 
 make a meal of their consorts if they so desire. Above all, 
 the Gy-ei have a readier and more concentrated power over 
 that mysterious fluid or agency which contains the element of 
 destruction, with a larger portion of that sagacity which com- 
 prehends dissimulation. Thus they can not only defend 
 themselves against all aggressions from the males, but could, 
 at any moment when he least suspected his danger, terminate 
 the existence of an offending spouse. To the credit of the 
 Gy-ei no instance of their abuse of this awful superiority in. 
 the art of destruction is on record for several ages. The last 
 that occurred in the community I speak of appears (according 
 to their chronology) to have been about two thousand years 
 ago. A Gy, then in a fit of jealousy, slew her husband; and 
 this abominable act inspired such terror among the males that 
 they emigrated in a body and left all the Gy-ei to[themselves. 
 The history runs that the widowed Gy-ei, thus reduced to de- 
 spair, fell upon the murderess when in her sleep (and there- 
 fore unarmed), and killed her, and then entered into a solemn 
 obligation amongst themselves to abrogate forever the exercise 
 of their extreme conjugal powers, and to inculcate the same 
 obligation for ever and ever on their female children. By this 
 conciliatory process, a deputation despatched to the fugitive 
 consorts succeeded in persuading many to return, but those 
 who did return were mostly the elder ones. The younger, 
 either from too craven a doubt of their consorts, or too high 
 an estimate of their own merits, rejected all overtures, and, 
 remaining in other communities, were caught up there by 
 other mates, with whom perhaps they were no better off. But 
 the loss of so large a portion of the male youth operated as a 
 salutary warning on the Gy-ei, and confirmed them in the 
 pious resolution to which they had pledged themselves. In- 
 
THE COMIXG RACE. 285 
 
 deed it is now popularly considered that, by long hereditary 
 disuse, the Gy-ei have lost both the aggressive and the defen- 
 sive superiority over the Ana which they once possessed, just 
 as in the inferior animals above the earth many peculiarities 
 in their original formation, intended by nature for their pro- 
 tection, gradually fade or become inoperative when not needed 
 under altered circumstances. I should be sorry, however, for 
 any An who induced a Gy to make the experiment whether he 
 or she were the stronger. 
 
 From the incident I have narrated, the Ana date certain 
 alterations in the marriage customs, tending, perhaps, some- 
 what to the advantage of the male. They now bind them- 
 selves in wedlock only for three years; at the end of each 
 third year either male or female can divorce the other and is 
 free to marry again. At the end of ten years the An has the 
 privilege of taking a second wife, allowing the first to retire 
 if she so please. These regulations are for the most part a 
 dead letter; divorces and polygamy are extremely rare, and 
 the marriage state now seems singularly happy and serene 
 among this astonishing people, — the Gy-ei, notwithstanding 
 their boastful superiority in physical strength and intellectual 
 abilities, being much curbed into gentle manners by the dread 
 of separation or of a second wife, and the Ana being very 
 much the creatures of custom, and not, except under great 
 aggravation, liking to exchange for hazardous novelties faces 
 and manners to which they are reconciled by habit. But 
 there is one privilege the Gy-ei carefully retain, and the de- 
 sire for which perhaps forms the secret motive of most lady 
 asserters of woman rights above ground. They claim the 
 privilege, here usurped by men, of proclaiming their love and 
 urging their suit, — in other words, of being the wooing party 
 rather than the wooed. Such a phenomenon as an old maid 
 does not exist among the Gy-ei. Indeed it is very seldom 
 that a Gy does not secure any An upon whom she sets her 
 heart, if his affections be not strongly engaged elsewhere. 
 However coy, reluctant, and prudish the male she courts may 
 prove at first, yet her perseverance, her ardour, her persua- 
 sive powers, her command over the mystic agencies of vril, 
 
286 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 are pretty sure to run down his neck into what we call "the 
 fatal noose." Their argument for the reversal of that rela- 
 tionship of the sexes which the blind tyranny of man has es- 
 tablished on the surface of the earth, appears cogent, and is 
 advanced with a frankness which might well be commended 
 to impartial consideration. They say, that of the two the 
 female is by nature of a more loving disposition than the 
 male; that love occupies a larger space in her thoughts, and 
 is more essential to her happiness, and that therefore she 
 ought to be the wooing party; that otherwise the male is a 
 shy and dubitant creature, that he has often a selfish predilec- 
 tion for the single state, that he often pretends to misunder- 
 stand tender glances and delicate hints, — that, in short, he 
 must be resolutely pursued and captured. They add, more- 
 over, that unless the Gy can secure the An of her choice, and 
 one whom she would not select out of the whole world be- 
 comes her mate, she is not only less happy than she otherwise 
 would be, but she is not so good a being, that her qualities of 
 heart are not sufiiciently developed ; whereas the An is a crea- 
 ture that less lastingly concentrates his affections on one ob- 
 ject; that if he cannot get the Gy whom he prefers he easily 
 reconciles himself to another Gy; and, finally, that at the 
 worst, if he is loved and taken care of, it is less necessary to 
 the welfare of his existence that he should love as well as be 
 loved; he grows contented with his creature comforts, and the 
 many occupations of thought which he creates for himself. 
 
 Whatever may be said as to this reasoning, the system 
 works well for the male; for being thus sure that he is truly 
 and ardently loved, and that the more coy and reluctant he 
 shows himself, the more the determination to secure him in- 
 creases, he generally contrives to make his consent dependent 
 on such conditions as he thinks the best calculated to insure, 
 if not a blissful, at least a peaceful life. Each individual Au 
 has his own hobbies, his own ways, his own predilections, 
 and, whatever they may be, he demands a promise of full and 
 unrestrained concession to them. This, in the pursuit of her 
 object, the Gy readily promises; and as the characteristic of 
 this extraordinary people is an implicit veneration for truth, 
 
THE COMING RACE. 287 
 
 and her word once given is never broken even by the giddiest 
 Gy, the conditions stipnlated for are religiously observed. In 
 fact, notwithstanding all their abstract rights and powers, the 
 Gy-ei are the most amiable, conciliatory, and submissive wives 
 I have ever seen even in the happiest households above 
 ground. It is an aphorism among them that "where a Gy 
 loves it is her pleasure to obey." It will be observed that in 
 the relationship of the sexes I have spoken only of marriage, 
 for such is the moral perfection to which this community has 
 attained, that any illicit connection is as little possible 
 amongst them as it would be to a couple of linnets during the 
 time they agreed to live in pairs. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Nothing had more perplexed me in seeking to reconcile 
 my sense to the existence of regions extending below the sur- 
 face of the earth, and habitable by beings, if dissimilar from, 
 still, in all material points of organism, akin to those in the 
 upper world, than the contradiction thus presented to the doc- 
 trine in which, I believe, most geologists and philosophers 
 concur, — namel}^, that though with us the sun is the great 
 source of heat, yet the deeper we go beneath the crust of the 
 earth, the greater is the increasing heat, being, it is said, 
 found in the ratio of a degree for every foot, commencing 
 from fifty feet below the surface. But though the domains 
 of the tribe I speak of were, on the higher ground, so com- 
 paratively near to the surface that I could account for a tem- 
 perature, therein, suitable to organic life, yet even the ravines 
 and valleys of that realm were much less hot than philoso- 
 phers would deem possible at such a depth, — certainly not 
 warmer than the south of France, or at least of Italy. And 
 according to all the accounts I received, vast tracts immeasur- 
 ably deeper beneath the surface, and in which one might have 
 
288 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 thought only salamanders could exist, were inhabited by in- 
 numerable races organized like ourselves. I cannot pretend 
 in any way to account for a fact which is so at variance with 
 the recognized laws of science, nor could Zee much help me 
 towards a solution of it. She did but conjecture that suffi- 
 cient allowance had not been made by our philosophers for 
 the extreme porousness of the interior earth, the vastness of 
 its cavities and irregularities, which served to create free cur- 
 rents of air and frequent winds, and for the various modes in 
 which heat is evaporated and thrown off. She allowed, how- 
 ever, that there was a depth at which the heat was deemed to 
 be intolerable to such organized life as was known to the ex- 
 perience of the Vril-ya, though their philosophers believed 
 that even in such places life of some kind, life sentient, life 
 intellectual, would be found abundant and thriving, could the 
 philosophers penetrate to it. "Wherever the All-Good builds," 
 said she, "there, be sure. He places inhabitants. He loves 
 not empty dwellings." She added, however, that many 
 changes in temperature and climate had been effected by the 
 skill of the Vril-ya, and that the agency of vril had been 
 successfully employed in such changes. She described a sub- 
 tle and life-giving medium called Lai, which I suspect to be 
 identical with the ethereal oxygen of Dr. Lewins, wherein 
 work all the correlative forces united under the name of vril ; 
 and contended that wherever this medium could be expanded, 
 as it were, sufficiently for the various agencies of vril to have 
 ample play, a temperature congenial to the highest forms of 
 life could be secured. She said also that it was the belief of 
 their naturalists that flowers and vegetation had been pro- 
 duced originally (whether developed from seeds borne from 
 the surface of the earth in the earlier convulsions of nature, 
 or imported by the tribes that first sought refuge in cavernous 
 hollows) through the operations of the light constantly brought 
 to bear on them, and the gradual improvement in culture. 
 She said also, that since the vril light had superseded all 
 other light-giving bodies, the colours of flower and foliage 
 had become more brilliant, and vegetation had acquired larger 
 growth. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 289 
 
 Leaving these matters to the consideration of those better 
 competent to deal with them, I must now devote a few pages 
 to the very interesting questions connected with the language 
 of the Vril-ya. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The language of the Vril-ya is peculiarly interesting, be- 
 cause it seems to me to exhibit with great clearness the traces 
 of the three main transitions through which language passes 
 in attaining to perfection of form. 
 
 One of the most illustrious of recent philologists, Max 
 Miiller, in arguing for the analogy between the strata of lan- 
 guage and the strata of the earth, lays down this absolute 
 dogma : — 
 
 " No language can, by any possibility, be inflectional without hav- 
 ing passed through the agglutinative and isolating stratum. No 
 language can be agglutinative without clinging with its roots to the 
 underlying stratum of isolation."^ 
 
 Taking then the Chinese language as the best existing type 
 of the original isolating stratum, "as the faithful photograph 
 of man in his leading-strings trying the muscles of his mind, 
 groping his way, and so delighted with his first successful 
 grasps that he repeats them again and again," ^ — we have, in 
 the language of the Vril-ya, still " clinging with its roots to 
 the underlying stratum," the evidences of the original isola- 
 tion. It abounds in monosyllables, which are the foundations 
 of the language. The transition into the agglutinative form 
 marks an epoch that must have gradually extended through 
 ages, the written literature of which has only survived in a 
 few fragments of symbolical mythology and certain pithy sen- 
 tences which have passed into popular proverbs. With the 
 extant literature of the Vril-ya the inflectional stratum com- 
 mences. No doubt at that time there must have operated 
 
 1 On the Stratification of Language, p. 20. 
 
 2 Max Miiller, Stratification of Language, p. 13. 
 
 19 
 
290 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 concurrent causes, in the fusion of races by some dominant 
 people, and the rise of some great literary phenomena by 
 which the form of language became arrested and fixed. As 
 the inflectional stage prevailed over the agglutinative, it is 
 surprising to see how much more boldly the original roots of 
 the language project from the surface that conceals them. In 
 the old fragments and proverbs of the preceding stage the 
 monosyllables which compose those roots vanish amidst words 
 of enormous length, comprehending whole sentences from 
 which no one part can be disentangled from the other and em- 
 ployed separately. But when the inflectional form of lan- 
 guage became so far advanced as to have its scholars and 
 grammarians, they seem to have united in extirpating all 
 such polysynthetical or polysyllabic monsters, as devouring 
 invaders of the aboriginal forms. Words beyond three sylla- 
 bles became proscribed as barbarous, and in proportion as the 
 language grew thus simplified it increased in strength, in dig- 
 nity, and in sweetness. Though now very compressed in 
 sound, it gains in clearness by that compression. By a single 
 letter, according to its position, they contrive to express all 
 that with civilized nations in our upper world it takes- the 
 waste, sometimes of syllables, sometimes of sentences, to ex- 
 press. Let me here cite one or two instances : An (which I 
 will translate man), Ana (men) ; the letter S is with them a 
 letter implying multitude, according to where it is placed; 
 Sana means mankind; Ansa, a multitude of men. The prefix 
 of certain letters in their alphabet invariably denotes com- 
 pound significations. For instance, Gl (which with them is 
 a single letter, as Th is a single letter with the Greeks) at the 
 commencement of a word infers an assemblage or union of 
 things, sometimes kindred, sometimes dissimilar, — as Oon, a 
 house; Gloon, a town (that is, an assemblage of houses). Ata 
 is sorrow ; Glata, a public calamity. Aur-an is the health or 
 well-being of a man; Glauran, the well-being of the State, 
 the good of the community; and a word constantly in their 
 mouths is A -glauran, which denotes their political creed, — 
 namely, that " the first principle of a community is the good 
 of all." Aub is invention; Sila, a tone in music. Glaubsila, 
 
THE COMING RACE. 291 
 
 as uniting the ideas of invention and of musical intonation, is 
 the classical word for poetry, — abbreviated in ordinary con- 
 versation to Glaubs. Na, which with them is, like Gl, but a 
 single letter, always, when an initial, im[)lies something an- 
 tagonistic to life or joy or comfort, resembling in this the 
 Aryan root ISTak, expressive of perishing or destruction. Kax 
 is darkness; Narl, death; Naria, sin or evil; Nas — an utter- 
 most condition of sin and evil, — corruption. In writing, they 
 deem it irreverent to express the Supreme Being by any 
 special name. He is symbolized by what may be termed the 
 hieroglyphic of a pyramid, A. In prayer they address Him 
 by a name which they deem too sacred to confide to a stranger, 
 and I know it not. In conversation they generally use a peri- 
 phrastic epithet, such as the All-Good. The letter V, sym- 
 bolical of the inverted pyramid, where it is an initial, nearly 
 always denotes excellence or power; as Vril, of which I have 
 said so much; Veed, an immortal spirit; Veedya, immor- 
 tality. Koom, pronounced like the Welsh Cwm, denotes 
 something of hollowness. Koom itself is a profound hollow, 
 metaphorically a cavern; Koom-in, a hole; Zi-koom, a valley; 
 Koom-zi, vacancy or void; Bodh-koora, ignorance (literally, 
 knowledge-void). Koom-Posh is their name for the govern- 
 ment of the many, or the ascendancy of the most ignorant or 
 hollow. Posh is an almost untranslatable idiom implying, as 
 the reader will see later, contempt. The closest rendering I 
 can give to it is our slang term "bosh; " and thus Koom-Posh 
 may be loosely rendered "Hollow-Bosh." But when Democ- 
 racy or Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into 
 that popular passion or ferocity which precedes its decease, as 
 (to cite illustrations from the upper world) during the French 
 Keign of Terror, or for the fifty years of the Eoman Republic 
 preceding the ascendancy of Augustus, their name for that 
 state of things is Glek-Kas. Ek is strife ; Glek, the universal 
 strife; Nas, as I before said, is corruption or rot, — thus Glek- 
 Nas may be construed "the universal strife-rot." Their com- 
 pounds are very expressive; thus, Bodh being knowledge, and 
 Too, a participle that implies the action of cautiously ap- 
 proaching, Too-bodh is their word for Philosophy. Pah is a 
 
292 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 contemptuous exclamation analogous to our idiom, "stuff and 
 nonsense ; " Pah-bodh (literally, stuff -and-nonsense-knowledge) 
 is their term for futile or false philosophy, and is applied to a 
 species of metaphysical or speculative ratiocination formerly 
 in vogue, which consisted in making inquiries that could not 
 be answered, and were not worth making, — such, for in- 
 stance, as, " Why does an An have five toes to his feet instead 
 of four or six?" "Did the first An, created by the All-Good, 
 have the same number of toes as his descendants?" "In the 
 form by which an An will be recognized by his friends in the 
 future state of being, will he retain any toes at all, and, if 
 so, will they be material toes or spiritual toes?" I take 
 these illustrations of Pah-bodh, not in irony or jest, but be- 
 cause the very inquiries I name formed the subject of contro- 
 versy by the latest cultivators of that " science " four thousand 
 years ago. 
 
 In the declension of nouns I was informed that anciently 
 there were eight cases (one more than in the Sanskrit Gram- 
 mar) ; but the effect of time has been to reduce these cases, 
 and multiply, instead of these varying terminations, explana- 
 tory prepositions. At present, in the Grammar submitted to 
 my study, there were four cases to nouns, three having vary- 
 ing terminations, and the fourth a differing prefix. 
 
 
 
 Singular. 
 
 
 Plural. 
 
 
 Norn. 
 
 An, 
 
 Man. 
 
 Norn. 
 
 Ana, 
 
 Men. 
 
 Dat. 
 
 A no, 
 
 to Man. 
 
 Dat. 
 
 Anoi, 
 
 to Men. 
 
 Ac. 
 
 Anam, 
 
 Man. 
 
 Ac. 
 
 Ananda, 
 
 Men 
 
 Voc. 
 
 Hil-An 
 
 Man. 
 
 Voc. 
 
 Hil-Ananda, 
 
 Men. 
 
 In the elder inflectional literature the dual form existed ; it 
 has long been obsolete. 
 
 The genitive case with them is also obsolete; the dative 
 supplies its place: they say the house to a man, instead of 
 the house of a man. When used (sometimes in poetry), the 
 genitive in the termination is the same as the nominative; so 
 is the ablative, the preposition that marks it being a prefix or 
 suffix at option, and generally decided by ear, according to the 
 sound of the noun. It will be observed that the prefix Hil 
 marks the vocative case. It is always retained in addressing 
 
THE COMING RACE. 293 
 
 another, except in the most intimate domestic relations; its 
 omission would be considered rude : just as in our old forms 
 of speech in addressing a king it would have been deemed dis- 
 respectful to say "King," and reverential to say "O King." 
 In fact, as they have no titles of honour, the vocative adjura- 
 tion supplies the place of a title, and is given impartially to 
 all. The prefix Hil enters into the composition of words that 
 imply distant communications, as Hil-ya, to travel. 
 
 In the conjugation of their verbs, which is much too lengthy 
 a subject to enter on here, the auxiliary verb Ya, "to go," 
 which plays so considerable a part in the Sanskrit, appears 
 and performs a kindred office, as if it were a radical in some 
 language from which both had descended. But another aux- 
 iliary of opposite signification also accompanies it and shares 
 its labours, — namely, Zi, to stay or repose. Thus Ya enters 
 into the future tense, and Zi in the preterite of all verbs re- 
 quiring auxiliaries. Yam, I go, Yiam, I may go, Yaui-ya, I 
 shall go (literally, I go to go), Zampoo-yan, I have gone 
 (literally, I rest from gone). Ya, as a termination, implies 
 by analogy progress, movement, effloresence. Zi, as a termi- 
 nal, denotes fixity, sometimes in a good sense, sometimes in a 
 bad, according to the word with which it is coupled. Iva-zi, 
 eternal goodness; Nan-zi, eternal evil. Poo (from) enters as 
 a prefix to words that denote repugnance, or things from 
 which we ought to be averse: Poo-pra, disgust; Poo-naria, 
 falsehood, the vilest kind of evil. Poosh, or Posh, I have 
 already confessed to be untranslatable literally. It is an ex- 
 pression of contempt not unmixed with pity. This radical 
 seems to have originated from inherent sympathy between the 
 labial effort and the sentiment that impelled it. Poo being an 
 utterance in which the breath is exploded from the lips with 
 more or less vehemence. On the other hand, Z, when an in- 
 itial, is with them a sound in which the breath is sucked in- 
 ward, and thus Zu, pronounced Zoo (which in their language 
 is one letter), is the ordinary prefix to words that signify 
 something that attracts, pleases, touches the heart, — as Zum- 
 mer, lover; Zutze, love; Zuzulia, delight. This indrawn 
 sound of Z seems indeed naturally appropriate to fondness. 
 
294 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 Thus, even in our language, mothers say to their babies, in 
 defiance of grammar, "Zoo darling;" and I have heard a 
 learned professor at Boston call his wife (he had been only 
 married a month) "Zoo little pet." 
 
 I cannot quit this subject, however, without observing by 
 what slight changes in the dialects favoured by different 
 tribes of the same race, the original signification and beauty 
 of sounds may become confused and deformed. Zee told me 
 with much indignation that Zummer (lover), which, in the 
 way she uttered it, seemed slowly taken down to the very 
 depths of her heart, was, in some not very distant communi- 
 ties of the Vril-ya, vitiated into the half -hissing, half -nasal, 
 wholly disagreeable, sound of Subber. I thought to myself 
 it only wanted the introduction of n before u to render it into 
 an English word significant of the last quality an amorous Gy 
 would desire in her Zummer. 
 
 I will but mention another peculiarity in this language 
 which gives equal force and brevity to its forms of ex- 
 pressions. 
 
 A is with them, as with us, the first letter of the alphabet, 
 and is often used as a prefix word by itself to convey a com- 
 plex idea of sovereignty or chiefdom, or presiding principle. 
 For instance, Iva is goodness; Diva, goodness and haj)piness 
 united; A-Diva is unerring and absolute truth. I have al- 
 ready noticed the value of A in A-glauran; so, in vril (to 
 whose properties they trace their present state of civilization), 
 A-vril, denotes, as I have said, civilization itself. 
 
 The philologist will have seen from the above how much 
 the language of the Vril-ya is akin to the Aryan or Indo- 
 Germanic; but, like all languages, it contains words and 
 forms in which transfers from very opposite sources of speech 
 have been taken. The very title of Tur, which. they give to 
 their supreme magistrate, indicates theft from a tongue akin 
 to the Turanian. They say themselves that this is a foreign 
 word borrowed from a title which their historical records 
 show to have been borne by the chief of a nation with whom 
 the ancestors of the Vril-ya were, in very remote periods, on 
 friendly terms, but which has long become extinct; and they 
 
THE COMING RACE. 295 
 
 say that when, after the discovery of vril, they remodelled 
 their political institutions, they expressly adopted a title 
 taken from an extinct race and a dead language for that of 
 their chief magistrate, in order to avoid all title.s for that 
 office with which they had previous associations. 
 
 Should life be spared to me, I may collect into systematic 
 form such knowledge as I acquired of this language during 
 my sojourn amongst the Vril-ya. But what I have already 
 said will perhaps suffice to show to genuine philological stu- 
 dents that a language which, preserving so many of the roots 
 in the aboriginal form, and clearing from the immediate, but 
 transitory, poly synthetical stage so many rude incumbrances, 
 has attained to such a union of simplicity and compass in its 
 final inflectional forms, must have been the gradual work of 
 countless ages and many varieties of mind; that it contains 
 the evidence of fusion between congenial races, and necessi- 
 tated, in arriving at the shape of which I have given exam- 
 ples, the continuous culture of a highly thoughtful people. 
 
 That, nevertheless, the literature which belongs to this lan- 
 guage is a literature of the past; that the present felicitous 
 state of society at which the Ana have attained forbids the 
 progressive cultivation of literature, especially in the two 
 main divisions of fiction and history, — I shall have occasion 
 to show later. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 This people have a religion, and, whatever may be said 
 against it, at least it has these strange peculiarities: firstly, 
 that they all believe in the creed they profess ; secondly, that 
 they all practise the precepts which the creed inculcates. 
 They unite in the worship of the one divine Creator and Sus- 
 tainer of the universe. They believe that it is one of the 
 properties of the all-permeating agency of vril to transmit to 
 the well-spring of life and intelligence every thought that a 
 
296 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 living creature can conceive; and though they do not contend 
 that the idea of a Deity is innate, yet they say that the An 
 (man) is the only creature, so far as their observation of na- 
 ture extends, to whom the cajyacity of conceiving tJiat idea, 
 with all the trains of thought which open out from it, is 
 vouchsafed. They hold that this capacity is a privilege that 
 cannot have been given in vain, and hence that prayer and 
 thanksgiving are acceptable to the divine Creator, and neces- 
 sary to the complete development of the human creature. 
 They offer their devotions both in private and public. Not 
 being considered one of their species, I was not admitted into 
 the building or temple in which the public worship is ren- 
 dered; but I am informed that the service is exceedingly 
 short, and unattended with any pomp of ceremony. It is a 
 doctrine with the Vril-ya that earnest devotion or complete 
 abstraction from the actual world cannot, with benefit to it- 
 self, be maintained long at a stretch by the human mind, es- 
 pecially in public, and that all attempts to do so either lead 
 to fanaticism or to hypocrisy. When they pray in private, it 
 is when they are alone or with their young children. 
 
 They say that in ancient times there was a great number of 
 books written upon speculations as to the nature of the Deity, 
 and upon the forms of belief or worship supposed to be most 
 agreeable to Him; but these were found to lead to such heated 
 and angry disputations as not only to shake the peace of the 
 community and divide families before the most united, but in 
 the course of discussing the attributes of the Deity, the exist- 
 ence of the Deity Himself became argued away, or, what was 
 worse, became invested with the passions and infirmities of 
 the human disputants. "For," said my host, "since a finite 
 being like an An cannot possibly define the Infinite, so, when 
 he endeavours to realize an idea of the Divinity, he only re- 
 duces the Divinity into an An like himself." During the 
 later ages, therefore, all theological speculations, though not 
 forbidden, have been so discouraged as to have fallen utterly 
 into disuse. 
 
 The Vril-ya unite in a conviction of a future state, more 
 felicitous and more perfect than the present. If they have 
 
THE COMING RACE. 297 
 
 very vague notions of the doctrine of rewards and punish- 
 ments, it is perhaps because they have no systems of rewards 
 and punishments among themselves, for there are no crimes 
 to punish, and their moral standard is so even that no An 
 among them is, upon the whole, considered more virtuous than 
 another. If one excels, perhaps, in one virtue, another equally 
 excels in some other virtue; if one has his prevalent fault or 
 infirmity, so also another has his. In fact, in their extraordi- 
 nary mode of life, there are so few temptations to wrong, that 
 they are good (according to their notions of goodness) merely 
 because they live. They have some fanciful notions upon the 
 continuance of life, when once bestowed, even in the vegetable 
 world, as the reader will see in the next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Though, as I have said, the Vril-ya discourage all specula- 
 tions on the nature of the Supreme Being, they appear to 
 concur in a belief by which they think to solve that great 
 problem of the existence of evil which has so perplexed the 
 philosophy of the upper world. They hold that wherever He 
 has once given life, with the perceptions of that life, however 
 faint it be, as in a plant, the life is never destroyed ; it passes 
 into new and improved forms, though not in this planet (dif- 
 fering therein from the ordinary doctrine of metempsychosis), 
 and that the living thing retains the sense of identity, so that 
 it connects its past life with its future, and is consciovs of its 
 progressive improvement in the scale of joy. For they say 
 that, without this assumption, they cannot, according to the 
 lights of human reason vouchsafed to them, discover the per- 
 fect justice which must be a constituent quality of the All- 
 Wise and the All-Good. Injustice, they say, can only emanate 
 from three causes : want of wisdom to perceive what is just, 
 want of benevolence to desire, want of power to fulfil it; and 
 that each of these three wants is incompatible in the All-Wise, 
 
298 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 the All-Good, the All-Powerful ; but that while, even in this 
 life, the wisdom, the benevolence, and the power of the Su- 
 preme Being are sufficiently apparent to compel our recogni- 
 tion, the justice necessarily resulting from those attributes 
 absolutely requires another life, not for man only, but for 
 every living thing of the inferior orders; that, alike in the 
 animal and the vegetable world, we see one individual ren- 
 dered, by circumstances beyond its control, exceedingly 
 wretched compared to its neighbours, — one only exists as 
 the prey of another, — even a plant suffers from disease till 
 it perishes prematurely, while the plant next to it rejoices in 
 its vitality and lives out its happy life free from a pang; that 
 it is an erroneous analogy from human infirmities to reply by 
 saying that the Supreme Being only acts by general laws, 
 thereby making his own secondary causes so potent as to mar 
 the essential kindness of the First Cause; and a still meaner 
 and more ignorant conception of the All-Good to dismiss with 
 a brief contempt all consideration of justice for the myriad 
 forms into which He has infused life, and assume that justice 
 is only due to the single product of the An. There is no 
 small and no great in the eyes of the divine Life-Giver. But 
 once grant that nothing, however humble, which feels that it 
 lives and suffers, can perish through the series of ages; that 
 all its suffering here, if continuous from the moment of its 
 birth to that of its transfer to another form of being, would 
 be more brief compared with eternity than the cry of the new- 
 born is compared to the whole life of a man ; and once suppose 
 that this living thing retains its sense of identity when so 
 transferred (for without that sense it could be aware of no 
 future being), — then, though indeed the fulfilment of divine 
 justice is removed from the scope of our ken, yet we have a 
 right to assume it to be uniform and universal, and not vary- 
 ing and partial, as it would be if acting only upon general 
 secondary laws; because such perfect justice flows of necessity 
 from perfectness of knowledge to conceive, perfectness of love 
 to will, and perfectness of power to complete it. 
 
 However fantastic this belief of the Vril-ya may be, it tends 
 perhaps to confirm politically the systems of government 
 
THE COMING RACE. 299 
 
 which, admitting differing degrees of wealth, yet establishes 
 perfect equality in rank, exquisite mildness in all relations 
 and intercourse, and tenderness to all created things which 
 the good of the community does not require them to destroy. 
 And though their notion of compensation to a tortured insect 
 or a cankered flower may seem to some of us a very wild 
 crotchet, yet, at least, it is not a mischievous one; and it 
 may furnish matter for no unpleasing reflection to think that 
 within the abysses of earth, never lit by a ray from the ma- 
 terial heavens, there should have penetrated so luminous a 
 conviction of the ineffable goodness of the Creator, — so fixed 
 an idea that the general laws by which He acts cannot admit 
 of any partial injustice or evil, and therefore cannot be com- 
 prehended without reference to their action over all space and 
 throughout all time. And since, as I shall have occasion to 
 observe later, the intellectual conditions and social systems 
 of this subterranean race comprise and harmonize great, and 
 apparently antagonistic, varieties in philosophical doctrine 
 and speculation which have from time to time been started, 
 discussed, dismissed, and have re-appeared amongst thinkers 
 or dreamers in the upper world, — so I may perhaps appropri- 
 ately conclude this reference to the belief of the Vril-ya — 
 that self-conscious or sentient life once given is indestructible 
 among inferior creatures as well as in man — by an eloquent 
 passage from the work of that eminent zoologist, Louis 
 Agassiz, which I have only just met with, many years after I 
 had committed to paper those recollections of the life of the 
 Vril-ya which I now reduce into something like arrangement 
 and form : — 
 
 " The relations which individual animals bear to one another are 
 of such a character that they ought long ago to have been considered 
 as sufficient proof that no organized being could ever have been called 
 into existence by other agency than by the direct intervention of a 
 reflective mind. This argues strongly in favour of the existence in 
 every animal of an immaterial principle similar to that which by its 
 excellence and superior endowments places man so much above ani- 
 mals; yet the principle unquestionably exists, and whether it be 
 called sense, reason, or instinct, it presents in the whole range of 
 
300 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 organized beings a series of phenomena closely linked together, and 
 upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, 
 but the very permanence of the specific differences which characterize 
 every organism. Most of the arguments in favour of the immortality 
 of man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other 
 living beings. May 1 not add that a future life in which man would 
 be deprived of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual and 
 moral improvement which results from the contemplation of the 
 harmonies of an organic world would involve a lamentable loss? And 
 may we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined worlds and 
 all their inhabitants in the presence of their Creator as the highest 
 conception of paradise? " ^ 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Kind to me as I found all in this household, the young 
 daughter of my host was the most considerate and thoughtful 
 in her kindness. At her suggestion I laid aside the habili- 
 ments in which I had descended from the upper earth, and 
 adopted the dress of the Vril-ya, with the exception of the 
 artful wings which served them, when on foot, as a graceful 
 mantle. But as many of the Vril-ya, when occupied in urban 
 pursuits, did not wear these wings, this exception created no 
 marked difference between myself and the race among which 
 I sojourned, and I was thus enabled to visit the town without 
 exciting unpleasant curiosity. Out of the household no one 
 suspected that I had come from the upper world, and I was 
 but regarded as one of some inferior and barbarous tribe 
 whom Aph-Lin entertained as a guest. 
 
 The city was large in proportion to the territory round it, 
 which was of no greater extent than many an English or 
 Hungarian nobleman's estate; but the whole of it, to the 
 verge of the rocks which constituted its boundary, was culti- 
 vated to the nicest degree, except where certain allotments of 
 mountain and pasture were humanely left free to the suste- 
 
 1 Essay on Classification, sect. xvii. pp. 97-99. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 301 
 
 nance of the harmless animals they had tamed, though not for 
 domestic use. So great is their kindness towards these hum- 
 bler creatures, that a sum is devoted from the public treasury 
 for the purpose of deporting them to other Vril-ya communi- 
 ties willing to receive them (chiefly new colonies), whenever 
 they become too numerous for the pastures allotted to them in 
 their native place. They do not, however, multiply to an ex- 
 tent comparable to the ratio at which, with us, animals bred 
 for slaughter increase. It seems a law of nature that animals 
 not useful to man gradually recede from the domains he occu- 
 pies, or even become extinct. It is an old custom of the 
 various sovereign States amidst which the race of the Vril-ya 
 are distributed, to leave between each State a neutral and un- 
 cultivated border-land. In the instance of the community I 
 speak of, this tract, being a ridge of savage rocks, was im- 
 passable by foot, but was easily surmounted, whether by the 
 wings of the inhabitants or the air-boats, of which I shall 
 speak hereafter. Roads through it were also cut for the tran- 
 sit of vehicles impelled by vril. These intercommunicating 
 tracts were always kept lighted, and the expense thereof de- 
 frayed by a special tax, to which all the communities compre- 
 hended in the denomination of Vril-ya contribute in settled 
 proportions. By these means a considerable commercial traf- 
 fic with other States, both near and distant, was carried on. 
 The surplus wealth of this special community was chiefly 
 agricultural. The community was also eminent for skill in 
 constructing implements connected with the arts of husban- 
 dry. In exchange for such merchandise it obtained articles 
 more of luxury than necessity. There were few things im- 
 ported on which they set a higher price than birds taught to 
 pipe artful tunes in concert. These were brought from a 
 great distance, and were marvellous for beauty of song and 
 plumage. I understood that extraordinary care was taken by 
 their breeders and teachers in selection, and that the species 
 had wonderfully improved during the last few years. I saw 
 no other pet animals among this community except some very 
 amusing and sportive creatures of the Batrachian species, re- 
 sembling frogs, but with very intelligent countenances, which 
 
302 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 the children were fond of, and kept in their private gardens. 
 They appear to have no animals akin to our dogs or horses, 
 though that learned naturalist, Zee, informed me that such 
 creatures had once existed in those parts, and might now be 
 found in regions inhabited by other races than the Vril-ya. 
 She said that they had gradually disappeared from the more 
 civilized world since the discovery of vril, and the results 
 attending that discovery, had dispensed with their uses. Ma- 
 chinery and the invention of wings had superseded the horse 
 as a beast of burden; and the dog was no longer wanted either 
 for protection or the chase, as it had been when the ancestors 
 of the Vril-ya feared the aggressions of their own kind, or 
 hunted the lesser animals for food. Indeed, however, so far 
 as the horse was concerned, this region was so rocky that a 
 horse could have been, there, of little use either for pastime 
 or burden. The only creature they use for the latter purpose 
 is a kind of large goat, which is much employed on farms. 
 The nature of the surrounding soil in these districts may be 
 said to have first suggested the invention of wings and air- 
 boats. The largeness of space, in proportion to the rural ter- 
 ritory occupied by the city, was occasioned by the custom of 
 surrounding every house with a separate garden. The broad 
 main street, in which Aph-Lin dwelt, expanded into a vast 
 square, in which were placed the College of Sages and all the 
 public offices, — a magnificent fountain of the luminous fluid 
 which I call naphtha ( I am ignorant of its real nature) in the 
 centre. All these public edifices have a uniform character of 
 massiveness and solidity. They reminded me of the archi- 
 tectural pictures of ISIartin. Along the upper stories of each 
 ran a balcony, or rather a terraced garden, supported by col- 
 umns, filled with flowering-plants, and tenanted by many 
 kinds of tame birds. From the square branched several 
 streets, all broad and brilliantly lighted, and ascending up 
 the eminence on either side. In my excursions in the town I 
 was never allowed to go alone ; Aph-Lin or his daughter was 
 my habitual companion. In this community the adult Gy is 
 seen walking with any young An as familiarly as if there 
 were no difference of sex. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 303 
 
 The retail shops are not very numerous ; the persons who 
 attend on a customer are all children of various ages, and ex- 
 ceedingly intelligent and courteous, but without the least 
 touch of importunity or cringing. The shopkeeper himself 
 might or might not be visible; when visible, he seemed rarely 
 employed on any matter connected with his professional busi- 
 ness ; and yet he had taken to that business from special lik- 
 ing to it, and quite independently of his general sources of 
 fortune. 
 
 Some of the richest citizens in the community kept such 
 shops. As I have before said, no difference of rank is recog- 
 nizable, and therefore all occupations hold the same equal 
 social status. An An, of whom I bought my sandals, was the 
 brother of the Tur, or chief magistrate ; and though his shop 
 was not larger than that of any bootmaker in Bond Street or 
 Broadway, he was said to be twice as rich as the Tur, who 
 dwelt in a palace. No doubt, however, he had some country- 
 seat. 
 
 The Ana of the community are, on the whole, an indolent 
 set of beings after the active age of childhood. Whether by 
 temperament or philosophy, they rank repose among the chief 
 blessings of life. Indeed, when you take away from a human 
 being the incentives to action which are found in cupidity or 
 ambition, it seems to me no wonder that he rests quiet. 
 
 In their ordinary movements they prefer the use of their 
 feet to that of their wings. But for their sports, or (to in- 
 dulge in a bold misuse of terms) their public promenades, they 
 employ the latter, also for the aerial dances I have described, 
 as well as for visiting their country-places, which are mostly 
 placed on lofty heights; and, when still young, they prefer 
 their wings, for travel into the other regions of the Ana, to 
 vehicular conveyances. 
 
 Those who accustom themselves to flight can fly, if less 
 rapidly than some birds, yet from twenty-five to thirty miles 
 an hour, and keep up that rate for five or six hours at a 
 stretch. But the Ana generally, on reaching middle age, are 
 not fond of rapid movements requiring violent exercise. Per- 
 haps for this reason, as they hold a doctrine which our own 
 
304 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 physicians will doubtless approve, — namely, that regular 
 transpiration through the pores of the skin is essential to 
 health, — they habitually use the sweating-baths to which we 
 give the name of Turkish or Roman, succeeded by douches of 
 perfumed waters. They have great faith in the salubrious 
 virtue of certain perfumes. 
 
 It is their custom also, at stated but rare periods, perhaps 
 four times a year when in health, to use a bath charged with 
 vril.^ They consider that this fluid, sparingly used, is a 
 great sustainer of life ; but used in excess, when in the nor- 
 mal state of health, rather tends to reaction and exhausted 
 vitality. For nearly all their diseases, however, they resort 
 to it as the chief assistant to nature in throwing off the 
 complaint. 
 
 In their own way they are the most luxurious of people, 
 but all their luxuries are innocent. They may be said to 
 dwell in an atmosphere of music and fragrance. Every room 
 has its mechanical contrivances for melodious sounds, usually 
 tuned down to soft-murmured notes, which seem like sweet 
 whispers from invisible spirits. They are too accustomed to 
 these gentle sounds to find them a hindrance to conversation, 
 nor, when alone, to reflection. But they have a notion that 
 to breathe an air filled with continuous melody and perfume 
 has necessarily an effect at once soothing and elevating upon 
 the formation of character and the habits of thought. Though 
 so temperate, and with total abstinence from other animal 
 food than milk, and from all intoxicating drinks, they are 
 delicate and dainty to an extreme in food and beverage ; and 
 in all their sports even the old exhibit a childlike gayety. 
 Happiness is the end at which they aim, not as the excite- 
 ment of a moment, but as the prevailing condition of the en- 
 tire existence ; and regard for the happiness of each other is 
 evinced by the exquisite amenity of their manners. 
 
 Their conformation of skull has marked differences from 
 
 1 I once tried the effect of the vril bath. It was very similar in its invig- 
 orating powers to that of the baths at Gastein, the virtnes of wliich are 
 ascribed by many physicians to electricity ; but though similar, the effect of 
 the vril bath was more lasting. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 305 
 
 that of any known races in the upper worhl, though I cannot 
 help thinking it a development, in the course of countless 
 ages, of the Brachy cephalic type of the Age of Stone in 
 Lyell's "Elements of Geology," ch. X, p. 113, as compared 
 with the Dolichocephalic type of the beginning of the Age of 
 Iron, correspondent with that now so prevalent amongst us, 
 and called the Celtic type. It has the same comparative 
 massiveness of forehead, not receding like the Celtic, the 
 same even roundness in the frontal organs; but it is far 
 loftier in the apex, and far less pronounced in the hinder 
 cranial hemisphere where phrenologists place the animal 
 organs. To speak as a phrenologist, the cranium common to 
 the Vril-ya has the organs of weight, number, tune, form, 
 order, causality, very largely developed; that of construction 
 much more pronounced than that of ideality. Those which 
 are called the moral organs, such as conscientiousness and 
 benevolence, are amazingly full; amativeness and combative- 
 ness are both small; adhesiveness large; the organ of de- 
 structiveness (that is, of determined clearance of intervening 
 obstacles) immense, but less than that of benevolence; and 
 their philoprogenitiveness takes rather the character of com- 
 passion and tenderness to things that need aid or protection 
 than of the animal love of offspring. I never met with one 
 person deformed or misshapen. The beauty of their counte- 
 nances is not only in symmetry of feature, but in a smooth- 
 ness of surface, which continues without line or wrinkle to 
 the extreme of old age, and a serene sweetness of expression, 
 combined with that majesty which seems to come from con- 
 sciousness of power and the freedom of all terror, physical or 
 moral. It is that very sweetness, combined with that majesty, 
 which inspired in a beholder like myself, accustomed to strive 
 with the passions of mankind, a sentiment of humiliation, of 
 awe, of dread. It is such an expression as a painter might 
 give to a demi-god, a genius, an angel. The males of the 
 Vril-ya are entirely beardless; the Gy-ei sometimes, in old 
 age, develop a small mustache. 
 
 I was surprised to find that the colour of their skin was not 
 uniformly that which I had remarked in those individuals 
 
 20 
 
3t)6 THE COMIXG RACE. 
 
 whom I had first encountered, — some being much fairer, and 
 even with blue eyes, and hair of a deep golden auburn, though 
 still of complexions warmer or richer in tone than persons in 
 the north of Europe. 
 
 I was told that this admixture of colouring arose from in- 
 termarriage with other and more distant tribes of the Vril-ya, 
 who, whether by the accident of climate or early distinction 
 of race, were of fairer hues than the tribes of which this com- 
 munity formed one. It was considered that the dark-red skin 
 showed the most ancient family of Ana; but they attached no 
 sentiment of pride to that antiquity, and, on the contrary, be- 
 lieved their present excellence of breed came from frequent 
 crossing with other families differing, yet akin ; and the}" en- 
 courage such intermarriages, always provided that it be with 
 the Vril-ya nations. Nations which, not conforming their 
 manners and institutions to those of the Vril-ya, nor indeed 
 held capable of acquiring the powers over the vril agencies 
 which it had taken them generations to attain and transmit, 
 were regarded with more disdain than citizens of New York 
 regard the negroes. 
 
 I learned from Zee, who had more lore in all matters than 
 any male with whom I was brought into familiar converse, 
 that the superiority of the Vril-ya was supposed to have 
 originated in the intensity of their earlier struggles against 
 obstacles in nature amidst the localities in which they had 
 first settled, ''Wherever," said Zee, moralizing, "wherever 
 goes on that early process in the history of civilization by 
 which life is made a struggle, in which the individual 
 has to put forth all his powers to compete with his fel- 
 low, we invariably find this result, — namely, since in the 
 competition a vast number must perish, nature selects for 
 preservation only the strongest specimens. With our race, 
 therefore, even before the discovery of vril, only the highest 
 organizations were preserved ; and there is among our ancient 
 books a legend, once popularly believed, that we were driven 
 from a region that seems to denote the world you come from, 
 in order to perfect our condition and attain to the purest 
 elimination of our species by the severity of the struggles our 
 
THE COMING RACE. 307 
 
 forefathers underwent; and that, when our education shall 
 become finally completed, we are destined to return to the 
 upper world, and supplant all the inferior races now existing 
 therein." 
 
 Aph-Lin and Zee often conversed with me in private upon 
 the political and social conditions of that upper world, in 
 which Zee so philosophically assumed that the inhabitants 
 were to be exterminated one day or other by the advent of the 
 Vril-ya. They found in my accounts — in which I continued 
 to do all I could (without launching into falsehoods so posi- 
 tive that they would have been easily detected by the shrewd- 
 ness of my listeners) to present our powers and ourselves in 
 the most flattering point of view — perpetual subjects of com- 
 parison between our most civilized populations and the meaner 
 subterranean races which they considered hopelessly plunged 
 in barbarism, and doomed to gradual if certain extinction. 
 But they both agreed in desiring to conceal from their com- 
 munity all premature opening into the regions lighted by the 
 sun ; both were humane, and shrunk from the thought of an- 
 nihilating so many millions of creatures; and the pictures I 
 drew of our life, highly coloured as they were, saddened 
 them. In vain I boasted of our great men, — poets, philoso- 
 phers, orators, generals, — and defied the Vril-ya to produce 
 their equals. "Alas! " said Zee, her grand face softening 
 into an angel-like compassion, "this predominance of the few 
 over the many is the surest and most fatal sign of a race in- 
 corrigibly savage. See you not that the primary condition of 
 mortal happiness consists in the extinction of that strife and 
 competition between individuals, which, no matter what forms 
 of government they adopt, render the many subordinate to the 
 few, destroy real liberty to the individual, whatever may be 
 the nominal liberty of the State, and annul that calm of ex- 
 istence, without which felicity, mental or bodily, cannot be 
 attained? Our notion is, that the more we can assimilate life 
 to the existence which our noblest ideas can conceive to be 
 that of spirits on the other side of the grave, why, the more 
 we approximate to a divine happiness here, and the more 
 easily we glide into the conditions of being hereafter. For, 
 
808 THE COMIXG RACE. 
 
 surely, all we can imagine of tlie life of gods, or of blessed 
 immortals, supposes tlie absence of self-made cares and con- 
 tentious passions, such, as avarice and ambition. It seems to 
 us that it must be a life of serene tranquillity, not indeed 
 without active occupations to the intellectual or spiritual 
 powers, but occupations, of whatsoever nature they be, con- 
 genial to the idiosyncrasies of each, not forced and repug- 
 nant, — a life gladdened by the untrammelled interchange of 
 gentle aifections, in which the moral atmosphere utterly kills 
 hate and vengeance and strife and rivalry. Such is the politi- 
 cal state to which all the tribes and families of the Vril-ya seek 
 to attain, and towards that goal all our theories of govern- 
 ment are shaped. You see how utterly opposed is such a pro- 
 gress to that of the uncivilized nations from which you come, 
 and which aim at a systematic perpetuity of troubles and cares 
 and warring passions, aggravated more and more as their pro- 
 gress storms its way onward. The most powerful of all the 
 races in our world, beyond the pale of the Vril-ya, esteems 
 itself the best governed of all political societies, and to have 
 reached in that respect the extreme end at which political 
 wisdom can arrive, so that the other nations should tend more 
 or less to copy it. It has established, on its broadest base, 
 the Koom-Posh, — namely, the government of the ignorant 
 upon the principle of being the most numerous. It has 
 placed the supreme bliss in the vying with each other in all 
 things, so that the evil passions are never in repose, — vying 
 for power, for wealth, for eminence of some kind; and in this 
 rivalry it is horrible to hear the vituperation, the slanders, 
 and calumnies which even the best and naildest among them 
 heap on each other without remorse or shame." 
 
 "Some years ago," said Aph-Lin, "I visited this people, 
 and their misery and degradation were the more appalling 
 because they were always boasting of their felicity and grand- 
 eur as compared with the rest of their species ; and there is 
 no hope that this people, which evidently resembles your own, 
 can improve, because all their notions tend to further deterio- 
 ration. They desire to enlarge their dominion more and 
 more, in direct antagonism to the truth that, beyond a very 
 
THE COMING RACE. 309 
 
 limited range, it is impossible to secure to a community the 
 happiness which belongs to a well-ordered family; and the 
 more they mature a system by which a few individuals are 
 heated and swollen to a size above the standard slenderness 
 of the millions, the more they chuckle and exult, and cry out, 
 'See by what great exceptions to the common littleness of our 
 race we prove the magnificent results of our system ! ' " 
 
 "In fact," resumed Zee, "if the wisdom of human life be 
 to approximate to the serene equality of immortals, there can 
 be no more direct flying off into the opposite direction than 
 a system which aims at carrying to the utmost the inequali- 
 ties and turbulences of mortals. Nor do I see how, by any 
 forms of religious belief, mortals, so acting, could fit them- 
 selves even to appreciate the joys of immortals to which they 
 still expect to be transferred by the mere act of dying. On 
 the contrary, minds accustomed to place happiness in things 
 so much the reverse of godlike, would find the happiness of 
 gods exceedingly dull, and would long to get back to a world 
 in which they could quarrel with each other." 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 I HAVE spoken so much of the Vril Staff that my reader 
 may expect me to describe it. This I cannot do accurately, 
 for I was never allowed to handle it for fear of some terrible 
 accident occasioned by my ignorance of its use. It is hollow, 
 and has in the handle several stops, keys, or springs by which 
 its force can be altered, modified, or directed, — so that by 
 one process it destroys, by another it heals; by one it can 
 rend the rock, by another disperse the vapour; by one it 
 affects bodies, by another it can exercise a certain influence 
 over minds. It is usually carried in the convenient size of a 
 walking-staff, but it has slides by which it can be lengthened 
 or shortened at will. When used for special purposes, the 
 upper part rests in the hollow of the palm, with the fore and 
 
310 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 middle fingers protruded. I was assured, however, that its 
 power was not equal in all, but proportioned to the amount of 
 certain vril properties in the wearer, in affinity, or rapport, 
 with the purposes to be effected. Some were more potent to 
 destroy, others to heal, etc. ; much also depended on the calm 
 and steadiness of volition in the manipulator. They assert 
 that the full exercise of vril power can only be acquired by 
 constitutional temperament, — that is, by hereditarily trans- 
 mitted organization, — and that a female infant of four years 
 old belonging to the Vril-ya races can accomplish feats with 
 the wand placed for the first time in her hand, which a life 
 spent in its practice would not enable the strongest and most 
 skilled mechanician born out of the pale of the Vril-ya to 
 achieve. All these wands are not equally complicated; those 
 intrusted to children are much simpler than those borne by 
 sages of either sex, and constructed with a view to the 
 special object in which the children are employed, — which, 
 as I have before said, is among the youngest children the most 
 destructive. In the wands of wives and mothers the correla- 
 tive destroying force is usually abstracted, the healing power 
 fully charged. I wish I could say more in detail of this 
 singular conductor of the vril fluid, but its machinery is as 
 exquisite as its effects are marvellous. 
 
 I should say, however, that this people have invented cer- 
 tain tubes by which the vril fluid can be conducted towards 
 the object it is meant to destroy, throughout a distance almost 
 indefinite ; at least I put it modestly when I say from five to 
 six hundred miles. And their mathematical science as ap- 
 plied to such purpose is so nicely accurate, that on the report 
 of some observer in an air-boat, any member of the vril de- 
 partment can estimate unerringly the nature of intervening 
 obstacles, the height to which the projectile instrument should 
 be raised, and the extent to which it should be charged, so as 
 to reduce to ashes, within a space of time too short for me to 
 venture to specify it, a capital twice as vast as London. 
 
 Certainly these Ana are wonderful mechanicians, — wonder- 
 ful for the adaptation of the inventive faculty to practical 
 uses. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 311 
 
 I went with my host and his daughter Zee over the great 
 public museum, which occupies a wing in the College of Sages, 
 and in which are hoarded, as curious specimens of the igno- 
 rant and blundering experiments of ancient times, many con- 
 trivances on which we pride ourselves as recent achievements. 
 In one department, carelessly thrown aside as obsolete lum- 
 ber, are tubes for destroying life by metallic balls and an 
 inflammable powder, on the principle of our cannons and 
 catapults, and even still more murderous than our latest 
 improvements. 
 
 My host spoke of these with a smile of contempt, such as 
 an artillery officer might bestow on the bows and arrows of 
 the Chinese. In another department there were models of 
 vehicles and vessels worked by steam, and of a balloon which 
 might have been constructed by Montgolfier. "Such," said 
 Zee, with an air of meditative wisdom, — " such were the feeble 
 triflings with nature of our savage forefathers, ere they had 
 even a glimmering perception of the properties of vril! " 
 
 This young Gy was a magnificent specimen of the muscular 
 force to which the females of her country attain. Her feat- 
 ures were beautiful, like those of all her race : never in the 
 upper world have I seen a face so grand and so faultless ; but 
 her devotion to the severer studies had given to her counte- 
 nance an expression of abstract thought which rendered it 
 somewhat stern when in repose, and such sternness became 
 formidable when observed in connection with her ample 
 shoulders and lofty stature. She was tall even for a Gy, and 
 I saw her lift up a cannon as easily as I could lift a pocket- 
 pistol. Zee inspired me with a profound terror, — a terror 
 which increased when we came into a department of the 
 museum appropriated to models of contrivances worked by 
 the agency of vril ; for here, merely by a certain play of her 
 vril staff, she herself standing at a distance, she put into 
 movement large and weighty substances. She seemed to en- 
 dow them with intelligence, and to make them comprehend 
 and obey her command. She setf complicated pieces of ma- 
 chinery into movement, arrested the movement or continued 
 it, until, within an incredibly short time, various kinds of 
 
312 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 raw material were reproduced as symmetrical works of art, 
 complete and perfect. Whatever effect mesmerism or electro- 
 biology produces over the nerves and muscles of animated 
 objects, this young Gy produced by the motions of her slender 
 rod over the springs and wheels of lifeless mechanism. 
 
 When I mentioned to my companions my astonishment 
 at this influence over inanimate matter, — while owning that, 
 in our world, I had witnessed phenomena which showed that 
 over certain living organizations certain other living organi- 
 zations could establish an influence genuine in itself, but 
 often exaggerated by credulity or craft, — Zee, who was more 
 interested in such subjects than her father, bade me stretch 
 forth my hand, and then, placing her own beside it, she called 
 my attention to certain distinctions of type and character. 
 In the first place, the thumb of the Gy (and, as I afterwards 
 noticed, of all that race, male or female) was much larger, at 
 once longer and more massive, than is found with our species 
 above ground. There is almost, in this, as great a difference 
 as there is between the thumb of a man and that of a gorilla. 
 Secondly, the palm is proportionately thicker than ours, the 
 texture of the skin infinitely finer and softer, its average 
 warmth is greater. More remarkable than all this, is a visi- 
 ble nerve, perceptible under the skin, which starts from the 
 wrist skirting the ball of the thumb, and branching, fork- 
 like, at the roots of the fore and middle fingers. "With 
 your slight formation of thumb," said the philosophical 
 young Gy, "and with the absence of the nerve which you 
 find more or less developed in the hands of our race, you can 
 never achieve other than imperfect and feeble power over the 
 agency of vril; but so far as the nerve is concerned, that is 
 not found in the hands of our earliest progenitors, nor in 
 those of the ruder tribes without the pale of the Vril-ya. It 
 has been slowly developed in the course of generations, com- 
 mencing in the early achievements, and increasing with the 
 continuous exercise, of the vril power; therefore, in the 
 course of one or two thousand years, such a nerve may possi- 
 bly be engendered in those higher beings of your race who 
 devote themselves to that paramount science through which 
 
THE COMING RACE. 313 
 
 is attained command over all the subtler forces of nature per- 
 meated by vril. But when you talk of matter as something 
 in itself inert and motionless, your parents or tutors surely 
 cannot have left you so ignorant as not to know that no form 
 of matter is motionless and inert : every particle is constantly 
 in motion and constantly acted upon by agencies, of which 
 heat is the most apparent and rapid, but vril the most subtle, 
 and, when skilfully wielded, the most powerful. So that, in 
 fact, the current launched by my hand and guided by my will 
 does but render quicker and more potent the action which is 
 eternally at work upon every particle of matter, however inert 
 and stubborn it may seem. If a heap of metal be not capable 
 of originating a thought of its own, yet, through its internal 
 susceptibility to movement, it obtains the power to receive 
 the thought of the intellectual agent at work on it ; and which, 
 when conveyed with a sufficient force of the vril power, it is 
 as much compelled to obey as if it were displaced by a visible 
 bodily force. It is animated for the time being by the soul 
 thus infused into it, so that one may almost say that it lives 
 and it reasons. Without this we could not make our auto- 
 mata supply the place of servants." 
 
 I was too much in awe of the thews and the learning of the 
 young Gy to hazard the risk of arguing with her. I had read 
 somewhere in my schoolboy days that a wise man, disputing 
 with a Roman emperor, suddenly drew in his horns ; and when 
 the emperor asked him whether he had nothing further to say 
 on his side of the question, replied, "Nay, Caesar, there is 
 no arguing against a reasoner who commands twenty-five 
 legions." 
 
 Though I had a secret persuasion that, whatever the real 
 effects of vril upon matter, JsIt. Faraday could have proved 
 her a very shallow philosopher as to its extent or its causes, 
 I had no doubt that Zee could have brained all the Fellows of 
 the Koyal Society, one after the other, with a blow of her 
 fist. Every sensible man knovv^s that it is useless to argue 
 with any ordinary female upon matters he comprehends ; but 
 to argue with a Gy seven feet high upon the mysteries of vril 
 — as well argue in a desert, and with a simoom! 
 
314 THE COMIXG RACE. 
 
 Amid the various departments to which the vast building of 
 the College of Sages was appropriated, that which interested 
 me most was devoted to the archaeology of the Vril-ya, and 
 comprised a very ancient collection of portraits. In these 
 the pigments and groundwork employed were of so durable a 
 nature that even pictures said to be executed at dates as remote 
 as those in the earliest annals of the Chinese retained much 
 freshness of colour. In examining this collection, two things 
 especially struck me, — firstly. That the pictures said to be 
 between six and seven thousand years old were of a much 
 higher degree of art than any produced within the last three 
 or four thousand years; and, secondly, That the portraits 
 within the former period much more resembled our own upper 
 world and European types of countenance. Some of them, 
 indeed, reminded me of the Italian heads which look out from 
 the canvas of Titian, speaking of ambition or craft, of care or 
 of grief, with furrows in which the passions have passed with 
 iron ploughshare. These were the countenances of men who 
 had lived in struggle and conflict before the discovery of the 
 latent forces of vril had, changed the character of society, — 
 men who had fought with each other for power or fame as we 
 in the upper world fight. 
 
 The type of face began to evince a marked change about a 
 thousand years after the vril revolution, becoming then, with 
 each generation, more serene, and in that serenity more ter- 
 ribly distinct from the faces of labouring and sinful men; 
 while in proportion as the beauty and the grandeur of the 
 countenance itself became more fully developed, the art of 
 the painter became more tame and monotonous. 
 
 But the greatest curiosity in the collection was that of 
 three portraits belonging to the pre-historical age, and, ac- 
 cording to mythical tradition, taken by the orders of a phi- 
 losopher, whose origin and attributes were as much mixed up 
 with symbolical fable as those of an Indian Budh or a Greek 
 Prometheus. 
 
 From this mysterious personage, at once a sage and a hero, 
 all the principal sections of the Vril-ya race pretend to trace 
 a common origin. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 315 
 
 The portraits are of the philosopher himself, of his grand- 
 father, and great-grandfather. They are all at full length. 
 The philosopher is attired in a long tunic which seems to 
 form a loose suit of scaly armour, borrowed, perhaps, from 
 some fish or reptile: but the feet and hands are exposed; the 
 digits in both are wonderfully long, and webbed. He has 
 little or no perceptible throat, and a low receding forehead, 
 not at all the ideal of a sage's. He has bright brown promi- 
 nent eyes, a very wide mouth and high cheek-bones, and a 
 muddy complexion. According to tradition, this philosopher 
 had lived to a patriarchal age, extending over many centuries, 
 and he remembered distinctly in middle life his grandfather 
 as surviving, and in childhood his great-grandfather; the 
 portrait of the first he had taken, or caused to be taken, 
 while yet alive, that of the latter was taken from his effigies 
 in mummy. The portrait of the grandfather had the features 
 and aspect of the philosopher, only much more exaggerated; 
 he was not dressed, and the colour of his body was singular, 
 — the breast and stomach yellow, the shoulders and legs of a 
 dull bronze hue : the great-grandfather was a magnificent speci- 
 men of the Batrachian genus, a Giant Frog, pur et simple. 
 
 Among the pithy sayings which, according to tradition, the 
 philosopher bequeathed to posterity in rhythmical form and 
 sententious brevity, this is notably recorded : " Humble your- 
 selves, my descendants; the father of your race was a tirat 
 (tadpole) : exalt yourselves, my descendants, for it was the 
 same Divine Thought which created your father that develops 
 itself in exalting you." 
 
 Aph-Lin told me this fable while I gazed on the three Ba- 
 trachian portraits. I said in reply : " You make a jest of my 
 supposed ignorance and credulity as an uneducated Tish; but 
 though these horrible daubs may be of great antiquity, and 
 were intended, perhaps, for some rude caricature, I presume 
 that none of your race, even in the less enlightened ages, ever 
 believed that the great-grandson of a Frog became a senten- 
 tious philosopher; or that any section, I will not say of the 
 lofty Vril-ya, but of the meanest varieties of the human race, 
 had its origin in a Tadpole." 
 
316 THE COMING EACE. 
 
 "Pardon me," answered Aph-Lin. "In what we call the 
 Wrangling or Philosophical Period of History, which was at 
 its height about seven thousand years ago, there was a very 
 distinguished naturalist, who proved to the satisfaction of 
 numerous disciples such analogical and anatomical agreements 
 in structure between an An and a Frog, as to show that out 
 of the one must have developed the other. They had some 
 diseases in common; they were both subject to the same para- 
 sitical worms in the intestines ; and, strange to say, the An 
 has, in his structure, a swimming-bladder, no longer of any 
 use to him, but which is a rudiment that clearly proves his 
 descent from a Frog. Nor is there any argument against 
 this theory to be found in the relative difference of size, for 
 there are still existent in our world Frogs of a size and stature 
 not inferior to our own, and many thousand years ago they 
 appear to have been still larger." 
 
 "I understand that," said I, "because Frogs thus enormous 
 are, according to our eminent geologists, who perhaps saw 
 them in dreams, said to have been distinguished inhabitants 
 of the upper world before the Deluge ; and such Frogs are ex- 
 actly the creatures likely to have flourished in the lakes and 
 morasses of your subterranean regions. But pray, proceed." 
 
 "In the Wrangling Period of History, whatever one sage 
 asserted another sage was sure to contradict. In fact, it was 
 a maxim in that age that the human reason could only be sus- 
 tained aloft by being tossed to and fro in the perpetual motion 
 of contradiction; and therefore another sect of philosophers 
 maintained the doctrine that the An was not the descendant 
 of the Frog, but that the Frog was clearly the improved de- 
 velopment of the An. The shape of the Frog, taken generally, 
 was much more symmetrical than that of the An; beside the 
 beautiful conformation of its lower limbs, its flanks, and 
 shoulders, the majority of the Ana in that day were almost 
 deformed, and certainly ill-shaped. Again, the Frog had the 
 power to live alike on land and in water, — a mighty privilege, 
 partaking of a spiritual essence denied to the An, since the 
 disuse of his swimming-bladder clearly proves his degenera- 
 tion from a higher development of species. Again, the earlier 
 
THE COMING RACE. 317 
 
 races of the Ana seem to have been covered with hair; and 
 even to a comparatively recent date, hirsute bushes deformed 
 the very faces of our ancestors, spreading wihl over their 
 cheeks and chins, as similar bushes, my poor Tish, spread 
 wild over yours. But the object of the higher races of the 
 Ana through countless generations has been to erase all ves- 
 tige of connection with hairy vertebrata, and they have gradu- 
 ally eliminated that debasing capillary excrement by the law 
 of sexual selection, the Gy-ei naturally preferring youth or 
 the beauty of smooth faces. But the degree of the Frog in 
 the scale of the vertebrata is shown in this, — that he has no 
 hair at all, not even on his head. He was born to that hair- 
 less perfection which the most beautiful of the Ana, despite 
 the culture of incalculable ages, have not yet attained. The 
 wonderful complication and delicacy of a Frog's nervous sys- 
 tem and arterial circulation were shown by this school to be 
 more susceptible of enjoyment than our inferior, or at least 
 simpler, physical frame allows us to be. The examination 
 of a Frog's hand, if I may use that expression, accounted for 
 its keener susceptibility to love, and to social life in general. 
 In fact, gregarious and amatory as are the Ana, Frogs are 
 still more so. In short, these two schools raged against each 
 other, one asserting the An to be the perfected type of the 
 Frog; the other that the Frog was the highest development 
 of the An. The moralists were divided in opinion with the 
 naturalists, but the bulk of them sided with the Frog-prefer- 
 ence school. They said, with much plausibility, that in 
 moral conduct (namely, in the adherence to rules best adapted 
 to the health and welfare of the individual and the commu- 
 nity) there could be no doubt of the vast superiority of the 
 Frog. All history showed the wholesale immorality of the 
 human race, the complete disregard, even by the most re- 
 nowned among them, of the laws which they acknowledged 
 to be essential to their own and the general happiness and 
 well-being; but the severest critic of the Frog race could not 
 detect in their manners a single aberration from the moral 
 law tacitly recognized by themselves. And what, after all, 
 can be the profit of civilization if superiority in moral con- 
 
318 THE COMIXG RACE. 
 
 duct be not the aim for which it strives, and the test by which 
 its progress should be judged? 
 
 "In fine, the adherents to this theory presumed that in 
 some remote period the Frog race had been the improved de- 
 velopment of the Human; but that, from causes which defied 
 rational conjecture, they had not maintained their original 
 position in the scale of nature; while the Ana, though of in- 
 ferior organization, had, by dint less of their virtues than 
 their vices, such as ferocity and cunning, gradually acquired 
 ascendancy, much as among the human race itself tribes ut- 
 terly barbarous have, by superiority in similar vices, utterly 
 destroyed or reduced into insignificance tribes originally ex- 
 celling them in mental gifts and culture. Unhappily these 
 disputes became involved with the religious notions of that 
 age; and as society was then administered under the govern- 
 ment of the Koom-Posh, who, being the most ignorant, were 
 of course the most inflammable class, the multitude took the 
 whole question out of the hands of the philosophers ; political 
 chiefs saw that the Frog dispute, so taken up by the popu- 
 lace, could become a most valuable instrument of their am- 
 bition; and for not less than one thousand years war and 
 massacre prevailed, during which period the philosophers on 
 both sides were butchered, and the government of the Koom- 
 Posh itself was happily brought to an end by the ascendancy 
 of a family that clearly established its descent from the abo- 
 riginal tadpole, and furnished despotic rulers to the various 
 nations of the Ana. These despots finally disappeared, at 
 least from our communities, as the discovery of vril led to the 
 tranquil institutions under which flourish all the races of the 
 Vril-ya." 
 
 "And do no wranglers or philosophers now exist to revive 
 the dispute ; or do they all recognize the origin of your race in 
 the tadpole? " 
 
 "Nay, such disputes," said Zee, with a lofty smile, "belong 
 to the Pah-bodh of the dark ages, and now only serve for the 
 amusement of infants. When we know the elements out of 
 which our bodies are composed, elements common to the hum- 
 blest vegetable plants, can it signify whether the All-Wise 
 
THE COMING RACE. 319 
 
 combined those elements out of one form more than another, 
 in order to create that in which He has placed the capacity to 
 receive the idea of Himself, and all the varied grandeurs of 
 intellect to which that idea gives birth? The An in reality 
 commenced to exist as An with the donation of that capacity, 
 and, with that capacity, the sense to acknowledge that, how- 
 ever through the countless ages his race may improve in wis- 
 dom, it can never combine the elements at his command into 
 the form of a tadi^ole." 
 
 "You speak well. Zee," said Aph-Lin; "and it is enough 
 for us short-lived mortals to feel a reasonable assurance that 
 whether the origin of the An was a tadpole or not, he is no 
 more likely to become a tadpole again than the institutions 
 of the Vril-ya are likely to relapse into the heaving quagmire 
 and certain strife-rot of a Koom-Posh." 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Vril-ya, being excluded from all sight of the heavenly 
 bodies, and having no other difference between night and day 
 than that which they deem it convenient to ma,ke for them- 
 selves, do not, of course, arrive at their divisions of time by 
 the same process that we do ; but I found it easy, by the aid 
 of my watch, which I luckily had about me, to compute their 
 time with great nicety. I reserve for a future work on the 
 science and literature of the Vril-ya, should I live to com- 
 plete it, all details as to the manner in which they arrive at 
 their notation of time; and content myself here with saying, 
 that in point of duration, their year differs very slightly from 
 ours, but that the divisions of their year are by no means the 
 same. Their day (including what we call night) consists of 
 twenty hours of our time, instead of twenty-four, and of 
 course their year comprises the correspondent increase in the 
 number of days by which it is summed up. They subdivide 
 
320 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 the twenty hours of their day thus: eight hours,^ called the 
 "Silent Hours," for repose; eight hours, called the "Earnest 
 Time," for the pursuits and occupations of life; and four 
 hours, called the " Easy Time " (with which what I may term 
 their day closes), allotted to festivities, sport, recreation, or 
 family converse, according to their several tastes and inclina- 
 tions. But, in truth, out of doors there is no night. They 
 maintain, both in the streets and in the surrounding country, 
 to the limits of their territory, the same degree of light at all 
 hours. Only, within doors, they lower it to a soft twilight 
 during the Silent Hours. They have a great horror of per- 
 fect darkness, and their lights are never wholly extinguished. 
 On occasions of festivity they continue the duration of full 
 light, but equally keep note of the distinction between night 
 and day, by mechanical contrivances which answer the pur- 
 pose of our clocks and watches. They are very fond of music; 
 and it is by music that these chronometers strike the princi- 
 pal division of time. At every one of their hours, during 
 their day, the sounds coming from all the timepieces in their 
 public buildings, and caught up, as it were, by those of houses 
 or hamlets scattered amidst the landscapes without the city, 
 have an effect singularly sweet, and yet singularly solemn. 
 But during the Silent Hours these sounds are so subdued as 
 to be only faintly heard by a waking ear. They have no 
 change of seasons, and, at least in the territory of this tribe, 
 the atmosphere seemed to me very equable, — warm as that of 
 an Italian summer, and humid rather than dry; in the fore- 
 noon usually very still, but at times invaded by strong blasts 
 from the rocks that made the borders of their domain. But 
 time is the same to them for sowing or reaping as in the 
 Golden Isles of the ancient poets. At the same moment you 
 see the younger plants in blade or bud, the older in ear or 
 fruit. All fruit-bearing plants, however, after fruitage, 
 either shed or change the colour of their leaves. But that 
 which interested me most in reckoning up their divisions of 
 
 1 For the sake of convenience, T adopt the words hours, days, years, etc., 
 in any general reference to subdivisions of time among the Vril-ya, — those 
 terms but loosely corresponding, however, with such subdivisions. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 321 
 
 time was the ascertainment of the average duration of life 
 amongst them. I found on minute inquiry that this very 
 considerably exceeded the term allotted to us on the upper 
 earth. What seventy years are to us, one hundred years are 
 to them. Nor is this the only advantage they have over us 
 in longevity, for as few among us attain to the age of seventy, 
 so, on the contrary, few among them die before the age of 
 one hundred; and they enjoy a general degree of health and 
 vigour which makes life itself a blessing even to the last. 
 Various causes contribute to this result: the absence of all 
 alcoholic stimulants; temperance in food; more especially, 
 perhaps, a serenity of mind undisturbed by anxious occupa- 
 tions and eager passions. They are not tormented by our 
 avarice or our ambition; they appear perfectly indifferent 
 even to the desire of fame; they are capable of great affec- 
 tion, but their love shows itself in a tender and cheerful com- 
 plaisance, and, while forming their happiness, seems rarely, 
 if ever, to constitute their woe. As the Gy is sure only to 
 marry where she herself fixes her choice, and as here, not 
 less than above ground, it is the female on whom the happi- 
 ness of home depends, so the Gy, having chosen the mate she 
 prefers to all others, is lenient to his faults, consults his 
 humours, and does her best to secure his attachment. The 
 death of a beloved one is of course with them, as with us, a 
 cause of sorrow; but not only is death with them so much 
 more rare before that age in which it becomes a release, but 
 when it does occur the survivor takes much more consolation 
 than, I am afraid, the generality of us do, in the certainty of 
 reunion in another and yet happier life. 
 
 All these causes, then, concur to their healthful and enjoy- 
 able longevity, though, no doubt, much also must be owing 
 to hereditary organization. According to their records, how- 
 ever, in those earlier stages of their society when they lived 
 in communities resembling ours, agitated by fierce competi- 
 tion, their lives were considerably shorter, and their maladies 
 more numerous and grave. They themselves say that the 
 duration of life, too, has increased, and is still on the in- 
 crease, since their discovery of the invigorating and medici- 
 
 21 
 
322 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 nal properties of vril, applied for remedial purposes. They 
 have few professional and regular practitioners of medicine, 
 and these are chiefly Gy-ei, who, especially if widowed and 
 childless, find great delight in the healing art, and even un- 
 dertake surgical operations in those cases required by acci- 
 dent, or, more rarely, by disease. 
 
 They have their diversions and entertainments, and, during 
 the Easy Time of their day, they are wont to assemble in 
 great numbers for those winged sports in the air which I have 
 already described. They have also public halls for music, 
 and even theatres, at which are performed pieces that ap- 
 peared to me somewhat to resemble the plays of the Chinese, 
 — dramas that are thrown back into distant times for their 
 events and personages, in which all classic unities are out- 
 rageously violated, and the hero, in one scene a child, in the 
 next is an old man, and so forth. These plays are of very 
 ancient composition. They appeared to me extremely dull, 
 on the whole, but were relieved by startling mechanical con- 
 trivances, and a kind of farcical broad humour, and detached 
 passages of great vigour and power expressed in language 
 highly poetical, but somewhat overcharged with metaphor 
 and trope. In fine, they seemed to me very much what the 
 plays of Shakspeare seemed to a Parisian in the time of 
 Louis XV., or perhaps to an Englishman in the reign of 
 Charles II. 
 
 The audience, of which the Gy-ei constituted the chief por- 
 tion, appeared to enjoy greatly the representation of these 
 dramas, which, for so sedate and majestic a race of females, 
 surprised me, till I observed that all the performers were 
 under the age of adolescence, and conjectured truly that 
 the mothers and sisters came to please their children and 
 brothers. 
 
 I have said that these dramas are of great antiquity. No 
 new plays, indeed no imaginative works sufficiently important 
 to survive their immediate dsLj, appear to have been composed 
 for several generations. In fact, though there is no lack of 
 new publications, and they have even what may be called 
 newspapers, these are chiefly devoted to mechanical science. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 323 
 
 reports of new inventions, announcements respecting various 
 details of business, — in short, to practical matters. Some- 
 times a child writes a little tale of adventure, or a young Gy 
 vents her amorous hopes or fears in a poem; but these effu- 
 sions are of very little merit, and are seldom read except by 
 children and maiden Gy-ei. The most interesting works of 
 a purely literary character are those of explorations and 
 travels into other regions of this nether world, which are 
 generally written by young emigrants, and are read with 
 great avidity by the relations and friends they have left 
 behind. 
 
 I could not help expressing to Aph-Lin my surprise that a 
 community in which mechanical science had made so marvel- 
 lous a progress, and in which intellectual civilization had ex- 
 hibited itself in realizing those objects for the happiness of 
 the people, which the political philosophers above ground 
 had, after ages of struggle, pretty generally agreed to con- 
 sider unattainable visions, should nevertheless be so wholly 
 without a contemporaneous literature, despite the excellence 
 to which culture had brought a language at once rich and 
 simple, vigorous and musical. 
 
 My host replied: "Do you not perceive that a literature 
 such as you mean would be wholly incompatible with that 
 perfection of social or political felicity at which you do us 
 the honour to think we have arrived? We have at last, after 
 centuries of struggle, settled into a form of government with 
 which we are content, and in which, as we allow no differ- 
 ences of rank, and no honours are paid to administrators dis- 
 tinguishing them from others, there is no stimulus given to 
 individual ambition. No one would read works advocating 
 theories that involved any political or social change, and 
 therefore no one writes them. If now and then an An feels 
 himself dissatisfied with our tranquil mode of life, he does not 
 attack it; he goes away. Thus all that part of literature 
 (and to judge by the ancient books in our public libraries, it 
 was once a very large part) which relates to speculative theo- 
 ries on society is become utterly extinct. Again, formerly 
 there was a vast deal written respecting the attributes and 
 
324 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 essence of the All-Good, and the arguments for and against a 
 future state; but now we all recognize two facts, — that there 
 is a Divine Being, and there is a future state, and we all 
 equally agree that if we wrote our fingers to the bone, we 
 could not throw any light upon the nature and conditions of 
 that future state, or quicken our apprehensions of the attri- 
 butes and essence of that Divine Being, Thus another part 
 of literature has become also extinct, happily for our race; for 
 in the times when so much was written on subjects which no 
 one could determine, people seemed to live in a perpetual 
 state of quarrel and contention. So, too, a vast part of our 
 ancient literature consists of historical records of wars and 
 revolutions during the times when the Ana lived in large and 
 turbulent societies, each seeking aggrandizement at the ex- 
 pense of the other. You see our serene mode of life now; 
 such it has been for ages. We have no events to chronicle. 
 What more of us can be said than that ' they were born, they 
 were happy, they died ' ? Coming next to that part of litera- 
 ture which is more under the control of the imagination, such 
 as what we call ' Glaubsila, ' or colloquially 'Glaubs, ' and you 
 call ' poetry, ' the reasons for its decline amongst us are abun- 
 dantly obvious. 
 
 "We find, by referring to the great masterpieces in that 
 department of literature which we all still read with pleas- 
 ure, but of which none would tolerate imitations, that they 
 consist in the portraiture of passions which we no longer ex- 
 perience, — ambition, vengeance, unhallowed love, the thirst 
 for warlike renown, and such like. The old poets lived in 
 an atmosphere impregnated with these passions, and felt 
 vividly what they expressed glowingly. No one can express 
 such passions now, for no one can feel them, or meet with 
 any sympathy in his readers if he did. Again, the old poetry 
 has a main element in its dissection of those complex myste- 
 ries of huiaan character which conduce to abnormal vices and 
 crimes, or lead to signal and extraordinary virtues; but our 
 society, having got rid of temptations to any prominent vices 
 and crimes, has necessarily rendered the moral average so 
 equal, that there are no very salient virtues. Without its 
 
THE COMING RACE. 325 
 
 ancient food of strong passions, vast crimes, heroic excel- 
 lences, poetry therefore is, if not actually starved to death, 
 reduced to a very meagre diet. There is still the poetry of 
 description, — description of rocks, and trees, and waters, 
 and common household life; and our young Gy-ei weave 
 much of this insipid kind of composition into their love 
 verses." 
 
 "Such poetry," said I, "might surely be made very charm- 
 ing; and we have critics amongst us who consider it a higher 
 kind than that which depicts the crimes, or analyzes the pas- 
 sions, of man. At all events, poetry of the insipid kind you 
 mention is a poetry that nowadays commands more readers 
 than any other among the people I have left above ground." 
 
 "Possibly; but then I suppose the writers take great pains 
 with the language they employ, and devote themselves to the 
 culture and polish of words and rhythms as an art? " 
 
 " Certainly they do : all great poets must do that. Though 
 the gift of poetry may be inborn, the gift requires as much 
 care to make it available as a block of metal does to be made 
 into one of your engines." 
 
 "And doubtless your poets have some incentive to bestow 
 all those pains upon such verbal prettinesses? " 
 
 " Well, I presume their instinct of song would make them 
 . sing as the bird does ; but to cultivate the song into verbal or 
 artificial prettiness probably does need an inducement from 
 without, and our poets find it in the love of fame, — perhaps, 
 now and then, in the want of money." 
 
 "Precisely so. But in our society we attach fame to noth- 
 ing which man, in that moment of his duration which is 
 called 'life,' can perform. We should soon lose that equality 
 which constitutes the felicitous essence of our commonwealth 
 if we selected any individual for pre-eminent praise: pre- 
 eminent praise would confer pre-eminent power, and the 
 moment it were given, evil passions, now dormant, would 
 awake; other men would immediately covet praise, then 
 would arise envy, and with envy hate, and with hate calumny 
 and persecution. Our history tells us that most of the poets 
 and most of the writers who, in the old time, were favoured 
 
326 THE COMIXG RACE. 
 
 with the greatest praise, were also assailed by the greatest 
 vituperation, and even, on the whole, rendered very unhappy, 
 partly by the attacks of jealous rivals, partly by the diseased 
 mental constitution which an acquired sensitiveness to praise 
 and to blame tends to engender. As for the stimulus of want, 
 in the first place, no man in our community knows the goad 
 of poverty ; and, secondly, if he did, almost every occupation 
 would be more lucrative than writing. 
 
 "Our public libraries contain all the books of the past 
 which time has preserved; those books, for the reasons above 
 stated, are infinitely better than any can write nowadays, and 
 they are open to all to read without cost. We are not such 
 fools as to pay for reading inferior books, when we can read 
 superior books for nothing." 
 
 "With us, novelty has an attraction; and a new book, if 
 bad, is read when an old book, though good, is neglected." 
 
 "Novelty to barbarous states of society struggling in de- 
 spair for something better has no doubt an attraction denied 
 to us, who see nothing to gain in novelties; but, after all, it 
 is observed by one of our great authors four thousand years 
 ago, that 'he who studies old books will always find in them 
 something new, and he who reads new books will always find 
 in them something old.' But to return to the question you 
 have raised: there being then among us no stimulus to pains- 
 taking labour, whether in desire of fame or in pressure of 
 want, such as have the poetic temperament, no doubt, vent 
 it in song, as you say the bird sings ; but for lack of elaborate 
 culture it fails of an audience, and, failing of an audience, 
 dies out, of itself, amidst the ordinary avocations of life." 
 
 " But how is it that these discouragements to the cultivation 
 of literature do not operate against that of science? " 
 
 " Your question amazes me. The motive to science is the 
 love of truth apart from all consideration of fame, and science 
 with us too is devoted almost solely to practical uses, essen- 
 tial to our social conservation and the comforts of our daily 
 life. No fame is asked by the inventor, and none is given to 
 him; he enjoys an occupation congenial to his tastes, and 
 needing no wear and tear of the passions. Man must have 
 
THE COMING RACE. 327 
 
 exercise for his mind as well as body ; and continuous exer- 
 cise, rather than violent, is best for both. Our most inge- 
 nious cultivators of science are, as a general rule, the longest 
 lived and the most free from disease. Painting is an amuse- 
 ment to many, but the art is not what it was in former times, 
 when the great painters in our various communities vied with 
 each other for tlie prize of a golden crown, which gave them 
 a social rank equal to that of the kings under whom they 
 lived. You will thus doubtless have observed in our archaeo- 
 logical department how superior in point of art the pictures 
 were several thousand years ago. Perhaps it is because music 
 is, in reality, more allied to science than it is to poetry, that, 
 of all the pleasurable arts, music is that which flourishes the 
 most amongst us. Still, even in music the absence of stimu- 
 lus in praise or fame has served to prevent any great supe- 
 riority of one individual over another; and we rather excel 
 in choral music, with the aid of our vast mechanical instru- 
 ments, in which we make great use of the agency of water, ^ 
 than in single performers. We have had scarcely any origi- 
 nal composer for some ages. Our favourite airs are very 
 ancient in substance, but have admitted many complicated 
 variations by inferior, though ingenious, musicians." 
 
 "Are there no political societies among the Ana which are 
 animated by those passions, subjected to those crimes, and 
 admitting those disparities in condition, in intellect, and in 
 morality, which the state of your tribe, or indeed of the 
 Vril-ya generally, has left behind in its progress to perfec- 
 tion? If so, among such societies perhaps Poetry and her 
 sister arts still continue to be honoured and to improve?" 
 
 ''There are such societies in remote regions, but we do not 
 admit them within the pale of civilized communities; we 
 scarcely even give them the name of Ana, and certainly not 
 that of Vril-ya. They are barbarians, living chiefly in that 
 low stage of being, Koom-Posh, tending necessarily to its 
 own hideous dissolution in Glek-Nas. Their wretched exist- 
 
 1 This may remind the student of Nero's invention of a musical machine, 
 by which water was made to perform the part of an orchestra, and on which 
 he was employed when the conspiracy against him broke out. 
 
828 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 ence is passed in perpetual contest and perpetual change. 
 When they do not fight with their neighbours, they fight 
 among themselves. They are divided into sections, which 
 abuse, plunder, and sometimes murder each other, and on the 
 most frivolous points of diiierence that would be unintelligi- 
 ble to us if we had not read history, and seen that we too 
 have passed through the same early state of ignorance and 
 barbarism. Any trifle is sufficient to set them together by the 
 ears. They pretend to be all equals; and the more they have 
 struggled to be so, by removing old distinctions and starting 
 afresh, the more glaring and intolerable the disparity be- 
 comes, because nothing in hereditary alfections and associa- 
 tions is left to soften the one naked distinction between the 
 many who have nothing and the few who have much. Of 
 course the many hate the few, but without the few they could 
 not live. The many are always assailing the few; sometimes 
 they exterminate the few; but as soon as they have done so, 
 a new few starts out of the many, and is harder to deal with 
 than the old few. For where societies are large, and compe- 
 tition to have something is the predominant fever, there must 
 be always many losers and few gainers. In short, the people 
 I speak of are savages groping their way in the dark towards 
 some gleam of light, and would demand our commiseration 
 for their infirmities, if, like all savages, they did not provoke 
 their own destruction by their arrogance and cruelty. Can 
 you imagine that creatures of this kind, armed only with such 
 miserable weapons as you may see in our museum of antiqui- 
 ties, clumsy iron tubes charged with saltpetre, have more 
 than once threatened with destruction a tribe of the Vril-ya, 
 which dwells nearest to them, because they say they have 
 thirty millions of population, — and that tribe may have fifty 
 thousand, — if the latter do not accept their notions of Soc-Sec 
 (money-getting) on some trading principles which they have 
 the imprudence to call a 'law of civilization' ? " 
 
 "But thirty millions of population are formidable odds 
 against fifty thousand! " 
 
 My host stared at me astonished. "Stranger," said he, 
 "you could not have heard me say that this threatened tribe 
 
THE COMING RACE. 329 
 
 belongs to the Vril-ya; and it only waits for these savages to 
 declare war, in order to commission some half-a-dozen small 
 children to sweep away their whole population." 
 
 At tliese words I felt a thrill of horror, recognizing much 
 more affinity with "the savages" than I did with the Vril-ya, 
 and remembering all I had said in praise of the glorious 
 American institutions, which Aph-Lin stigmatized as Koom- 
 Posh. Recovering my self-possession, I asked if there were 
 modes of transit by which I could safely visit this temerarious 
 and remote people. 
 
 " You can travel with safety, by vril agency, either along 
 the ground or amid the air, throughout all the range of the 
 communities with which we are allied and akin; but I cannot 
 vouch for your safety in barbarous nations governed by dif- 
 ferent laws from ours, — nations, indeed, so benighted, that 
 there are among them large numbers who actually live by 
 stealing from each other, and one could not with safety in 
 the Silent Hours even leave the doors of one's own house 
 open." 
 
 Here our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of 
 Tae, who came to inform us that he, having been deputed to 
 discover and destroy the enormous reptile which I had seen 
 on my first arrival, had been on the watch for it ever since 
 his visit to me, and had begun to suspect that my eyes had 
 deceived me, or that the creature had made its way through 
 the cavities within the rocks to the wild regions in which 
 dwelt its kindred race, when it gave evidences of its where- 
 abouts by a great devastation of the herbage bordering one of 
 the lakes. "And," said Tae, "I feel sure that within that 
 lake it is now hiding. So " (turning to me) " I thought it 
 might amuse you to accompany me to see the way we destroy 
 such unpleasant visitors." As T looked at the face of the 
 young child, and called to mind the enormous size of the 
 creature he proposed to exterminate, I felt myself shudder 
 with fear for him, and perhaps fear for myself, if I accom- 
 panied him in such a chase; but my curiosity to witness the 
 destructive effects of the boasted vril, and my unwillingness 
 to lower myself in the eyes of an infant by betraying appre- 
 
330 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 hensions of personal safety, prevailed over my first impulse. 
 Accordingly, I thanked Tae for his courteous consideration 
 for my amusement, and professed my willingness to set out 
 with him on so diverting an enterprise. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 As Tae and myself, on quitting the town, and leaving to 
 the left the main road which led to it, struck into the fields, 
 the strange and solemn beauty of the landscape, lighted up, 
 by numberless lamps, to the verge of the horizon, fascinated 
 my eyes, and rendered me for some time an inattentive lis- 
 tener to the talk of my companion. 
 
 Along our way various operations of agriculture were being 
 carried on by machinery, the forms of which were new to me, 
 and for the most part very graceful; for among these people 
 art, being so cultivated for the sake of mere utility, exhibits 
 itself in adorning or refining the shapes of useful objects. 
 Precious metals and gems are so profuse among them, that 
 they are lavished on things devoted to purposes the most 
 commonplace ; and their love of utility leads them to beautify 
 its tools, and quickens their imagination in a way unknown 
 to themselves. 
 
 In all service, whether in or out of doors, they make great 
 use of automaton figures, which are so ingenious, and so 
 pliant to the operations of vril, that they actually seem 
 gifted with reason. It was scarcely ^x)ssible to distinguish 
 the figures I beheld, apparently guiding or superintending 
 the rapid movements of vast engines, from human forms en- 
 dowed with thought. 
 
 By degrees, as we continued to walk on, my attention be- 
 came roused by the lively and acute remarks of my com- 
 panion. The intelligence of the children among this race is 
 marvellously precocious, perhaps from the habit of having 
 
THE COMING RACE. 331 
 
 intrusted to them, at so early an age, the toils and responsi- 
 bilities of middle age. Indeed, in conversing with Taii, I 
 felt as if talking with some superior and observant man of 
 my own years. I asked him if he could form any estimate 
 of the number of communities into which the race of the 
 Vril-ya is subdivided. 
 
 "Not exactly," he said, "because they multiply, of course, 
 every year as the surplus of each community is drafted off. 
 But I heard my father say that, according to the last report, 
 there were a million and a half of communities speaking our 
 language, and adopting our institutions and forms of life and 
 government; but, I believe, with some differences, about which 
 you had better ask Zee. She knows more than most of the 
 Ana do. An An cares less for things that do not concern him 
 than a Gy does; the Gy-ei are inquisitive creatures." 
 
 " Does each community restrict itself to the same number 
 of families or amount of population that you do? " 
 
 "No; some have much smaller populations, some have 
 larger, — varying according to the extent of the country they 
 appropriate, or to the degree of excellence to which they have 
 brought their machinery. Each community sets its own 
 limit according to circumstances, taking care always that 
 there shall never arise any class of poor by the pressure of 
 population upon the productive powers of the domain; and 
 that no State shall be too large for a government resembling 
 that of a single well-ordered family. I imagine that no Vril 
 community exceeds thirty thousand households. But, as a 
 general rule, the smaller the community, provided there be 
 hands enough to do justice to the capacities of the territory 
 it occupies, the richer each individual is, and the larger the 
 sum contributed to the general treasury; above all, the hap- 
 pier and the more tranquil is the whole political body, and 
 the more perfect the products of its industry. The State 
 which all tribes of the Vril-ya acknowledge to be the highest 
 in civilization, and which has brought the vril force to its 
 fullest development, is perhaps the smallest. It limits itself 
 to four thousand families; but every inch of its territory is 
 cultivated to the utmost perfection of garden ground ; its ma- 
 
S32 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 chinery excels that of every other tribe ; and there is no pro- 
 duct of its industry in any department which is not sought 
 for, at extraordinary prices, by each community of our race. 
 All our tribes make this State their model, considering that 
 we should reach the highest state of civilization allowed to 
 mortals if we could unite the greatest degree of happiness 
 with the highest degree of intellectual achievement; and it is 
 clear that the smaller the society the less difficult that will 
 be. Ours is too large for it." 
 
 This reply set me thinking. I reminded myself of that 
 little State of Athens, with only twenty thousand free citi- 
 zens, and which to this day our mightiest nations regard as 
 the supreme guide and model in all departments of intellect. 
 But then Athens permitted fierce rivalry and perpetual 
 change, and was certainly not happy, Kousing myself from 
 the revery into which these reflections had plunged me, I 
 brought back our talk to the subjects connected with 
 emigration. 
 
 "But," said I, "when, I suppose yearly, a certain number 
 among you agree to quit home and found a new community 
 elsewhere, they must necessarily be very few, and scarcely 
 sufficient, even with the help of the machines they take with 
 them, to clear the ground, and build towns, and form a civil- 
 ized State with the comforts and luxuries in which they had 
 been reared." 
 
 "You mistake. All the tribes of the Vril-ya are in con- 
 stant communication with each other, and settle amongst 
 themselves each year what proportion of one community will 
 unite with the emigrants of another, so as to form a State of 
 sufficient size; and the place for emigration is agreed upon at 
 least a year before, and pioneers sent from each State to level 
 rocks, and embank waters, and construct houses; so that 
 when the emigrants at last go they find a city already made, 
 and a country around it at least partially cleared. Our hardy 
 life as children makes us take cheerfully to travel and adven- 
 ture. I mean to emigrate myself when of age." 
 
 "Do the emigrants always select places hitherto unin- 
 habited and barren?" 
 
THE COMING RACE. 333 
 
 "As yet generally, because it is our rule never to destroy 
 except where necessary to our well being. Of course, we 
 cannot settle in lands already occupied by the Vril-ya; and if 
 we take the cultivated lands of the other races of Ana, we 
 must utterly destroy the previous inhabitants. Sometimes, 
 as it is, we take waste spots, and find that a troublesome, 
 quarrelsome race of Ana, especially if under the administra- 
 tion of Koom-Posh or Glek-Nas, resents our vicinity, and 
 picks a quarrel with us; then, of course, as menacing our 
 welfare, we destroy it: there is no coming to terms of peace 
 with a race so idiotic that it is always changing the form of 
 government which represents it. Koom-Posh," said the child, 
 emphatically, "is bad enough, still it has brains, though at 
 the back of its head, and is not without a heart; but in Glek- 
 Nas the brain and heart of the creatures disappear, and they 
 become all jaws, claws, and belly." 
 
 " You express yourself strongly. Allow me to inform you 
 that I myself, and I am proud to say it, am the citizen of a 
 Koom-Posh." 
 
 "I no longer," answered Tae, "wonder to see you here so 
 far from your home. What was the condition of your native 
 community before it became a Koom-Posh? " 
 
 "A settlement of emigrants, — like those settlements which 
 your tribe sends forth; but so far unlike your settlements, 
 that it was dependent on the State from which it came. It 
 shook off that yoke, and, crowned with eternal glory, became 
 a Koom-Posh." 
 
 "Eternal glory! how long has the Koom-Posh lasted? " 
 
 "About one hundred years." 
 
 "The length of an An's life,— a very young community. 
 In much less than another one hundred years your Koom-Posh 
 will be a Glek-Nas." 
 
 " Nay, the oldest States in the world I come from have such 
 faith in its duration, that they are all gradually shaping their 
 institutions so as to melt into ours, and their most thoughtful 
 politicians say that, whether they like it or not, the inevita- 
 ble tendency of these old States is towards Koom-Posh-erie." 
 
 "The old States?" 
 
334 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 "Yes, the old States." 
 
 "With populations very small in proportion to the area of 
 productive land? " 
 
 " On the contrary, with populations very large in proportion 
 to that area." 
 
 "I see! old States indeed! — so old as to become drivelling 
 if they don't pack off that surplus population as we do ours. 
 Very old States, — very, very old! Pray, Tish, do j^ou think 
 it wise for very old men to try to turn head-over-heels as very 
 young children do? And if you asked them why they at- 
 tempted such antics, should you not laugh if they answered 
 that by imitating very young children they could become very 
 young children themselves? Ancient history abounds with 
 instances of this sort a great many thousand years ago, and 
 in every instance a very old State that played at Koom-Posh 
 soon tumbled into Glek-Xas. Then, in horror of its own self, 
 it cried out for a master, as an old man in his dotage cries out 
 for a nurse ; and after a succession of masters or nurses, more 
 or less long, that very old State died out of history. A very 
 old State attempting Koom-Posh-erie is like a very old man 
 who pulls down the house to which he has been accustomed, 
 but he has so exhausted his vigour in pulling down, that all 
 he can do in the way of rebuilding is to run up a crazy hut, 
 in which himself and his successors whine out 'How the wind 
 blows! How the walls shake!' " 
 
 " My dear Tae, I make all excuse for your unenlightened 
 prejudices, which every schoolboy educated in a Koom-Posh 
 could easily controvert, though he might not be so preco- 
 ciously learned in ancient history as you appear to be." 
 
 "I learned! not a bit of it. But would a schoolboy, edu- 
 cated in your Koom-Posh, ask his great-great-grandfather or 
 great-great-grandmother to stand on his or her head with the 
 feet uppermost; and if the poor old folks hesitated, saj^, 
 'What do you fear? — see how I do it!'" 
 
 " Tae, I disdain to argue with a child of your age. I re- 
 peat, I make allowances for your want of that culture which 
 a Koom-Posh alone can bestow." 
 
 " I, in my turn, " answered Tae, with an air of the suave 
 
THE COMING RACE. 335 
 
 but lofty good breeding which characterizes his race, "not 
 only make allowances for you as not educated among the 
 Vril-ya, but I entreat you to vouchsafe me your pardon for 
 insufficient respect to the habits and opinions of so amiable 
 a — Tish!" 
 
 I ought before to have observed that I was commonly called 
 Tish by my host and his family, as being a polite and indeed a 
 pet name, metaphorically signifying a small barbarian, liter- 
 ally a Froglet; the children apply it endearingly to the tame 
 species of Frog which they keep in their gardens. 
 
 We had now reached the banks of a lake, and Tae here 
 paused to point out to me the ravages made in fields skirting 
 it. "The enemy certainly lies within these waters," said 
 Tae. *' Observe what shoals of fish are crowded together at 
 the margin, — even the great fishes with the small ones, who 
 are their habitual prey, and who generally shun them ; all for- 
 get their instincts in the presence of a common destroyer. 
 This reptile certainly must belong to the class of the Krek-a, 
 a class more devouring than any other, and said to be among 
 the few surviving species of the world's dreadest inhabitants 
 before the Ana were created. The appetite of a Krek is in- 
 satiable, — it feeds alike upon vegetable and animal life; but 
 for the swift-footed creatures of the elk species it is too slow 
 in its movements. Its favourite dainty is an An when it can 
 catch him unawares; and hence the Ana destroy it relent- 
 lessly whenever it enters their dominion. I have heard that 
 when our forefathers first cleared this country, these mon- 
 sters, and others like them, abounded, and, vril being then 
 undiscovered, many of our race were devoured. It was im- 
 possible to exterminate them wholly till that discovery which 
 constitutes the power and sustains the civilization of our 
 race. But after the uses of vril became familiar to us, all 
 creatures inimical to us were soon annihilated. Still, once a 
 year or so, one of these enormous reptiles wanders from the 
 unreclaimed and savage districts beyond, and within my 
 memory one seized upon a young Gy who was bathing in this 
 very lake. Had she been on land and armed with her staff, 
 it would not have dared even to show itself; for, like all sav- 
 
336 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 age creatures, the reptile has a marvellous instinct, which 
 warns it against the bearer of the vril wand. How they teach 
 their young to avoid him, though seen for the first time, is 
 one of those mysteries which you may ask Zee to explain, for 
 I cannot. 1 So long as I stand here, the monster will not stir 
 from its lurking-place; but we must now decoy it forth." 
 " Will not that be difficult? " 
 
 *'Not at all. Seat yourself yonder on that crag (about one 
 hundred yards from the bank), while I retire to a distance. In 
 a short time the reptile will catch sight or scent of you, and, 
 perceiving that you are no vril-bearer, will come forth to de- 
 vour you. As soon as it is fairly out of the water it becomes 
 my prey." 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me that I am to be the decoy to that 
 horrible monster which could engulf me within its jaws in a 
 second! I beg to decline." 
 
 The child laughed. ''Fear nothing," said he; "only sit 
 still." 
 
 Instead of obeying this command, I made a bound, and was 
 about to take fairly to my heels, when Tae touched me lightly 
 on the shoulder, and fixing his eyes steadily on mine, I was 
 rooted to the spot. All power of volition left me. Submis- 
 sive to the infant's gesture, I followed him to the crag he had 
 indicated, and seated myself there in silence. Most readers 
 have seen something of the effects of electro-biology, whether 
 genuine or spurious. No professor of that doubtful craft had 
 ever been able to influence a thought or a movement of mine, 
 but I was a mere machine at the will of this terrible child. 
 Meanwhile he expanded his wings, soared aloft, and alighted 
 amidst a copse at the brow of a hill at some distance. 
 
 I was alone; and turning my eyes with an indescribable 
 sensation of horror towards the lake, I kept them fixed on its 
 water, spell -bound. It might be ten or fifteen minutes, to 
 
 1 The reptile in this instinct does but resemble our wild ])irdsand animals, 
 which will not come in reach of a man armed with a gun. When the electric 
 wires were first put up, partridges struck against them in their flight, and fell 
 down wounded. No younger generations of partridges meet with a similar 
 accident. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 337 
 
 me it seemed ages, before the still surface, gleaming under 
 the lamp-light, began to be agitated towards the centre. At 
 the same time the shoals of fish near the margin evinced their 
 sense of the enemy's approach by splash and leap and bub- 
 bling circle. I could detect their hurried flight hither and 
 thither, some even casting themselves ashore. A long, dark, 
 undulous furrow came moving along the waters, nearer and 
 nearer, till the vast head of the reptile emerged, — its jaws 
 bristling with fangs, and its dull eyes fixing themselves hun- 
 grily on the spot where I sat motionless. And now its fore 
 feet were on the strand, now its enormous breast, scaled on 
 either side as in armour, in the centre showing corrugated 
 skin of a dull venomous yellow; and now its whole length 
 was on the land, a hundred feet or more from the jaw to the 
 tail. Another stride of those ghastly feet would have brought 
 it to the spot where I sat. There was but a moment between 
 me and this grim form of death, when what seemed a flash of 
 lightning shot through the air, smote, and, for a space in 
 time briefer than that in which a man can draw his breath, 
 enveloped the monster; and then, as the flash vanished, there 
 lay before me a blackened, charred, smouldering mass, a some- 
 thing gigantic, but of which even the outlines of form were 
 burned away, and rapidly crumbling into dust and ashes. I 
 remained still seated, still speechless, ice-cold with a new 
 sensation of dread : what had been horror was now awe. 
 
 I felt the child's hand on my head. Fear left me, the spell 
 was broken; I rose up. "You see with what ease the Vril-ya 
 destroy their enemies," said Tae; and then, moving towards 
 the bank, he contemplated the smouldering relics of the mon- 
 ster, and said quietly, " I have destroyed larger creatures, but 
 none with so much pleasure. Yes, it is a Krek; what suffer- 
 ing it must have inflicted while it lived ! " Then he took up 
 the poor fishes that had flung themselves ashore, and restored 
 them mercifully to their native element. 
 
 22 
 
338 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 As we walked back to the town, Tae took a new and circui- 
 tous way, in order to show me what, to use a familiar term, I 
 will call the "Station," from which emigrants or travellers to 
 other communities commence their journeys. I had, on a 
 former occasion, expressed a wish to see their vehicles. 
 These I found to be of two kinds, one for land-journeys, one 
 for aerial voyages: the former were of all sizes and forms, 
 some not larger than an ordinary carriage, some movable 
 houses of one story and containing several rooms, furnished 
 according to the ideas of comfort or luxury which are enter- 
 tained by the Vril-ya. The aerial vehicles were of light sub- 
 stances, not the least resembling our balloons, but rather our 
 boats and pleasure-vessels, with helm and rudder, with large 
 wings as paddles, and a central machine worked by vril. All 
 the vehicles both for land or air were indeed worked by that 
 potent and mysterious agency. 
 
 I saw a convoy set out on its journey, but it had few pas- 
 sengers, containing chiefly articles of merchandise, and was 
 bound to a neighbouring community; for among all the tribes 
 of the Vril-ya there is considerable commercial interchange. 
 I may here observe, that their money currency does not con- 
 sist of the precious metals, which are too common among 
 them for that purpose. The smaller coins in ordinary use 
 are manufactured from a peculiar fossil shell, the compara- 
 tively scarce remnant of some very early deluge, or other con- 
 vulsion of nature, by which a species has become extinct. It 
 is minute, and flat as an oyster, and takes a jewel-like polish. 
 This coinage circulates among all the tribes of the Vril-ya. 
 Their larger transactions are carried on much like ours, by 
 bills of exchange, and thin metallic plates which answer the 
 purpose of our bank-notes. 
 
 Let me take this occasion of adding that the taxation among 
 the tribe I became acquainted with was very considerable, 
 
THE COMING RACE. 339 
 
 compared with the amount of population; but I never heard 
 that any one grumbled at it, for it was devoted to purposes of 
 universal utility, and indeed necessary to the civilization of 
 the tribe. The cost of lighting so large a range of country, 
 of providing for emigration, of maintaining the public build- 
 ings at which the various operations of national intellect were 
 carried on, from the first education of an infant to the depart- 
 ments to which the College of Sages were perpetually trying 
 new experiments in mechanical science, — all these involved 
 the necessity for considerable State funds. To these I must 
 add an item that struck me as very singular. I have said that 
 all the human labour required by the State is carried on by 
 children up to the marriageable age. For this labour the 
 State pays, and at a rate immeasurably higher than our remu- 
 neration to labour even in the United States. According to 
 their theory, every child, male or female, on attaining the 
 marriageable age, and there terminating the period of labour, 
 should have acquired enough for an independent competence 
 during life. As, no matter what the disparity of fortune in 
 the parents, all the children must equally serve, so all are 
 equally paid according to their several ages or the nature of 
 their work. When the parents or friends choose to retain a 
 child in their own service, they must pay into the public 
 fund in the same ratio as the State pays to the children it 
 employs; and this sum is handed over to the child when the 
 period of service expires. This practice serves, no doubt, to 
 render the notion of social equality familiar and agreeable; 
 and if it may be said that all the children form a democracy, 
 no less truly it may be said that all the adults form an aris- 
 tocracy. The exquisite politeness and refinement of man- 
 ners among the Vril-ya, the generosity of their sentiments, 
 the absolute leisure they enjoy for following out their own 
 private pursuits, the amenities of their domestic intercourse, 
 in which they seem as members of one noble order that can 
 have no distnist of each other's word or deed, — all combine 
 to make the Yril-ya the most perfect nobility which a po- 
 litical disciple of Plato or Sidney could conceive for the ' 
 ideal of an aristocratic republic. 
 
340 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 From the date of the expedition with Tae which I have 
 just narrated, the child paid me frequent visits. He had 
 taken a liking to me, which I cordially returned. Indeed, as 
 he was not yet twelve years old, and had not commenced the 
 course of scientific studies with which childhood closes in 
 that country, my intellect was less inferior to his than to that 
 of the elder members of his race, especially of the Gy-ei, and 
 most especially of the accomplished Zee. The children of 
 the Vril-ya, having upon their minds the weight of so many 
 active duties and grave responsibilities, are not generally 
 mirthful; but Tae, with all his wisdom, had much of the 
 playful good-humour one often finds the characteristic of 
 elderly men of genius. He felt that sort of pleasure in my 
 society which a boy of a similar age in the upper world has 
 in the company of a pet dog or monkey. It amused him to 
 try and teach me the ways of his people, as it amuses a 
 nephew of mine to make his poodle walk on his hind legs, or 
 jump through a hoop. I willingly lent myself to such experi- 
 ments, but I never achieved the success of the poodle. I 
 was very much interested at first in the attempt to ply the 
 wings which the youngest of the Vril-ya use as nimbly and 
 easily as ours do their legs and arms; but my efforts were 
 attended with contusions serious enough to make me abandon 
 them in despair. 
 
 The wings, as I before said, are very large, reaching to the 
 knee, and in repose thrown back so as to form a very graceful 
 mantle. They are composed from the feathers of a gigantic 
 bird that abounds in the rocky heights of the country, — the 
 colour mostly white, but sometimes with reddish streaks. 
 They are fastened round the shoulders with light but strong 
 springs of steel; and, when expanded, the arms slide through 
 loops for that purpose, forming, as it were, a stout central 
 
THE COMING RACE. 341 
 
 membrane. As the arms are raised, a tubular lining beneath 
 the vest or tunic becomes, by mechanical contrivance, inflated 
 with air, increased or diminished at will by the movement of 
 the arms, and serving to buoy the whole form as on bladders. 
 The wings and the balloon-like apparatus are highly charged 
 with vril; and when the body is thus wafted upward, it seems 
 to become singularly lightened of its weight. I found it easy 
 enough to soar from the ground; indeed, when the wings were 
 spread it was scarcely possible not to soar, but then came the 
 difficulty and the danger. I utterly failed in the power to 
 use and direct the pinions, though I am considered among my 
 own race unusually alert and ready in bodily exercises, and 
 am a very practised swimmer. I could only make the most 
 confused and blundering efforts at flight. I was the servant 
 of the wings; the wings were not my servants, — they were 
 beyond my control; and when by a violent strain of muscle, 
 and, I must fairly own, in that abnormal strength which is 
 given by excessive fright, I curbed their gyrations and 
 brought them near to the body, it seemed as if I lost the 
 sustaining power stored in them and the connecting bladders, 
 as when air is let out of a balloon, and found myself precipi- 
 tated again to earth; saved, indeed, by some spasmodic flut- 
 terings, from being dashed to pieces, but not saved from the 
 bruises and the stun of a heavy fall. I would, however, have 
 persevered in my attempts, but for the advice or the com- 
 mands of the scientific Zee, who had benevolently accompa- 
 nied my flutterings, and indeed, on the last occasion, flying 
 just under me, received my form as it fell on her own ex- 
 panded wings, and preserved me from breaking my head on 
 the roof of the pyramid from which we had ascended. 
 
 "I see," she said, "that your trials are in vain, not from 
 the fault of the wings and their appurtenances, nor from any 
 imperfectness and malformation of your own corpuscular sys- 
 tem, but from irremediable, because organic, defect in your 
 power of volition. Learn that the connection between the 
 will and the agencies of that fluid which has been subjected 
 .to the control of the Yril-ya was never established by the first 
 discoverers, never achieved by a single generation; it has 
 
342 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 gone on increasing, like other properties of race, in propor- 
 tion as it has been uniformly transmitted from parent to 
 child, so that, at last, it has become an instinct; and an in- 
 fant An of our race wills to fly as intuitively and uncon- 
 sciously as he wills to walk. He thus plies his invented or 
 artificial wings with as much safety as a bird plies those with 
 which it is born. I did not think sufficiently of this when I 
 allowed you to try an experiment which allured me, for I 
 longed to have in you a companion. I shall abandon the 
 experiment now. Your life is becoming dear to me." Here- 
 with the Gy's voice and face softened, and I felt more seri- 
 ously alarmed than I had been in my previous flights. 
 
 Now that I am on the subject of wings, I ought not to omit 
 mention of a custom among the Gy-ei which seems to me very 
 pretty and tender in the sentiment it implies. A Gy wears 
 wings habitually while yet a virgin; she joins the Ana in 
 their aerial sports; she adventures alone and afar into the 
 wilder regions of the sunless world: in the boldness and 
 height of her soarings, not less than in the grace of her move- 
 ments, she excels the opposite sex. But from the day of 
 marriage she wears wings no more; she suspends them with 
 her own willing hand over the nuptial couch, never to be re- 
 sumed unless the marriage tie be severed by divorce or death. 
 
 Now when Zee's voice and eyes thus softened — and at that 
 softening I prophetically recoiled and shuddered — Tae, who 
 had accompanied us in our flights, but who, child-like, had 
 been much more amused with my awkwardness than sympa- 
 thizing in my fears or aware of my danger, hovered over us, 
 poised amidst the still radiant air, serene and motionless on 
 his outspread wings, and hearing the endearing words of the 
 young Gy, laughed aloud. Said he, " If the Tish cannot learn 
 the use of wings, you may still be his companion, Zee, for 
 you can suspend your own." 
 
THE COMING RACE. 343 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 I HAD for some time observed in my host's highly informed 
 and powerfully proportioned daughter that kindly and protec- 
 tive sentiment which, whether above the earth or below it, an 
 all-wise Providence has bestowed upon the feminine division 
 of the human race. But until very lately I had ascribed it to 
 that affection for " pets " which a human female at every age 
 shares with a human child. I now became painfully aware 
 that the feeling with which Zee deigned to regard me was dif- 
 ferent from that which I had inspired in Tae; but this con- 
 viction gave me none of that complacent gratification which 
 the vanity of man ordinarily conceives from a flattering ap- 
 preciation of his personal merits on the part of the fair sex; on 
 the contrary, it inspired me with fear. Yet of all the Gy-ei 
 in the community, if Zee were perhaps the wisest and the 
 strongest, she was, by common repute, the gentlest, and she was 
 certainly the most popularly beloved. The desire to aid, to 
 succour, to protect, to comfort, to bless, seemed to pervade her 
 whole being. Though the complicated miseries that origi- 
 nate in penury and guilt are unknown to the social system of 
 the Vril-ya, still, no sage had yet discovered in vril an agency 
 which could banish sorrow from life ; and wherever amongst 
 her people sorrow found its way, there Zee followed in the 
 mission of comforter. Did some sister Gy fail to secure the 
 love she sighed for? Zee sought her out, and brought all 
 the resources of her lore, and all the consolations of her 
 sympathy, to bear upon a grief that so needs the solace of a 
 confidant. In the rare cases when grave illness seized upon 
 childhood or youth, and the cases, less rare, when, in the 
 hardy and adventurous probation of infants, some accident 
 attended with pain and injury occurred, Zee forsook her 
 studies and her sports, and became the healer and the nurse. 
 Her favourite flights were towards the extreme boundaries of 
 the domain, where children were stationed on guard against 
 
344 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 outbreaks of warring forces in nature, or the invasions of de- 
 vouring animals, so that she might warn them of any peril 
 which her knowledge detected or foresaw, or be at hand if 
 any harm should befall. Nay, even in the exercise of her 
 scientific acquirements there was a concurrent benevolence of 
 purpose and will. Did she learn any novelty in invention 
 that would be useful to the practitioner of some special art or 
 craft? She hastened to communicate and explain it. Was 
 some veteran sage of the College perplexed and wearied with 
 the toil of an abstruse study? She would patiently devote 
 herself to his aid, work out details for him, sustain his spirits 
 with her hopeful smile, quicken his wit with her luminous 
 suggestion, be to him, as it were, his own good genius made 
 visible as the strengthener and inspirer. The same tender- 
 ness she exhibited to the inferior creatures. I have often 
 known her bring home some sick and wounded animal, and 
 tend and cherish it as a mother would tend and cherish her 
 stricken child. Many a time when I sat in the balcony, or 
 hanging garden, on which my window opened, I have watched 
 her rising in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few mo- 
 ments groups of infants below, catching sight of her, would 
 soar upward with joyous sounds of greeting; clustering and 
 sporting around her, so that she seemed a very centre of in- 
 nocent delight. When I have walked with her amidst the 
 rocks and valleys without the city, the elk-deer would scent 
 or see her from afar, come bounding up, eager for the caress 
 of her hand, or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some 
 musical whisper that the creature had learned to comprehend. 
 It is the fashion among the virgin Gy-ei to wear on their 
 foreheads a circlet, or coronet, with gems resembling opals, 
 arranged in four points or rays like stars. These are lustre- 
 less in ordinary use, but if touched by the vril wand they 
 take a clear lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns. 
 This serves as an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp, 
 if, in their wanderings beyond their artificial lights, they have 
 to traverse the dark. There are times, when I have seen 
 Zee's thoughtful majesty of face lighted up by this crowning 
 halo, that I could scarcely believe her to be a creature of 
 
THE COMING RACE. 345 
 
 mortal birth, and bent my head before her as the vision of 
 a being among the celestial orders. 
 
 But never once did my heart feel for this lofty type of the 
 noblest womanhood a sentiment of human love. Is it that, 
 among the race I belong to, man's pride so far influences his 
 passions that woman loses to him her special charm of woman 
 if he feels her to be in all things eminently superior to him- 
 self? But by what strange infatuation could this peerless 
 daughter of a race which, in the supremacy of its powers 
 and the felicity of its conditions, ranked all other races in 
 the category of barbarians, have deigned to honour me with 
 her preference? In personal qualifications, though I passed 
 for good-looking among the people I came from, the hand- 
 somest of my countrymen might have seemed insignificant 
 and homely beside the grand and serene type of beauty which 
 characterized the aspect of the Vril-ya. 
 
 That novelty, the very difference between myself and those 
 to whom Zee was accustomed, might serve to bias her fancy 
 was probable enough, and as the reader will see later, such a 
 cause might suffice to account for the predilection with which 
 I was distinguished by a young Gy scarcely out of her child- 
 hood, and very inferior in all respects to Zee. But whoever 
 will consider those tender characteristics which I have just 
 ascribed to the daughter of Aph-Lin, may readily conceive 
 that the main cause of my attraction to her was in her in- 
 stinctive desire to cherish, to comfort, to protect, and, in 
 protecting, to sustain and to exalt. Thus, when I look back, 
 I account for the only weakness unworthy of her lofty nature, 
 which bowed the daughter of the Vril-ya to a woman's affec- 
 tion for one so inferior to herself as was her father's guest. 
 But be the cause what it may, the consciousness that I had 
 inspired such affection thrilled me with awe, — a moral awe 
 of her very perfections, of her mysterious powers, of the in- 
 separable distinctions between her race and my own; and 
 with that awe, I must confess to my shame, there combined 
 the more material and ignoble dread of the perils to which her 
 preference would expose me. 
 
 Could it be supposed for a moment that the parents and 
 
346 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 friends of this exalted being could view without indignation 
 and disgust the possibility of an alliance between herself and 
 a Tish? Her they could not punish, her they could not con- 
 tine nor restrain. Neither in domestic nor in political life 
 do they acknowledge any law of force amongst themselves; 
 but they could effectually put an end to her infatuation by a 
 flash of vril inflicted upon me. 
 
 Under these anxious circumstances, fortunately, my con- 
 science and sense of honour were free from reproach. Jt be- 
 came clearly my duty, if Zee's preference continued manifest, 
 to intimate it to my host, with, of course, all the delicacy 
 which is ever to be preserved by a well-bred man in confiding 
 to another any degree of favour by which one of the fair sex 
 may condescend to distinguish him. Thus, at all events, I 
 should be freed from responsibility or suspicion of voluntary 
 participation in the sentiments of Zee; and the superior wis- 
 dom of my host might probably suggest some sage extrication 
 from my perilous dilemma. In this resolve I obeyed the 
 ordinary instinct of civilized and moral man, who, erring 
 though he be, still generally prefers the right course in those 
 cases where it is obviously against his inclinations; his inter- 
 ests, and his safety to elect the wrong one. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 As the reader has seen, Aph-Lin had not favoured my 
 general and unrestricted intercourse with his countrymen. 
 Though relying on my promise to abstain from giving any 
 information as to the world I had left, and still more on the 
 promise of those to whom had been put the same request, not 
 to question me, which Zee had exacted from Tae, yet he did 
 not feel sure that, if I were allowed to mix with the strangers 
 whose curiosity the sight of me had aroused, I could suffi- 
 ciently guard myself against their inquiries. When I went 
 out, therefore, it was never alone; I was always accompanied 
 
THE COMING RACE. 347 
 
 either by one of my host's family, or my child-friend Tae. 
 Bra, Aph-Lin's wife, seldom stirred beyond the gardens which 
 surrounded the house, and was fond of reading the ancient 
 literature, which contained something of romance and adven- 
 ture not to be found in the writings of recent ages, and pre- 
 sented pictures of a life unfamiliar to her experience and 
 interesting to her imagination, — pictures, indeed, of a life 
 more resembling that which we lead every day above-ground, 
 coloured by our sorrows, sins, and passions, and much to her 
 what the Tales of the Genii or the Arabian Nights are to us. 
 But her love of reading did not prevent Bra from the dis- 
 charge of her duties as mistress of the largest household in 
 the city. She went daily the round of the chambers, and 
 saw that the automata and other mechanical contrivances 
 were in order, that the numerous children employed by Aph- 
 Lin, whether in his private or public capacity, were carefully 
 tended. Bra also inspected the accounts of the whole estate, 
 and it was her great delight to assist her husband in the busi- 
 ness connected with his office as chief administrator of the 
 Lighting Department, so that her avocations necessarily kept 
 her much within doors. The two sons were both completing 
 their education at the College of Sages; and the elder, who 
 had a strong passion for mechanics, and especially for works 
 connected with the machinery of timepieces and automata, 
 had decided on devoting himself to these pursuits, and was 
 now occupied in constructing a shop, or warehouse, at which 
 his inventions could be exhibited and sold. The younger 
 son preferred farming and rural occupations ; and when not 
 attending the College, at which he chiefly studied the theories 
 of agriculture, was much absorbed by his practical application 
 of that science to his father's lands. It will be seen by this 
 how completely equality of ranks is established among this 
 people, a shopkeeper being of exactly the same grade in esti- 
 mation as the large landed proprietor. Aph-Lin was the 
 wealthiest member of the community, and his eldest son pre- 
 ferred keeping a shop to any other avocation; nor was this 
 choice thought to show any want of elevated notions on his 
 part. 
 
348 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 This young man had been much interested in examining 
 my watch, the works of which were new to him, and was 
 greatly pleased when I made him a present of it. Shortly 
 after, he returned the gift with interest, by a watch of his 
 own construction, marking both the time as in my watch and 
 the time as kept among the Vril-ya. I have that watch still, 
 and it has been much admired by many among the most emi- 
 nent watchmakers of London and Paris. It is of gold, with 
 diamond hands and figures, and it plays a favourite tune 
 among the Vril-ya in striking the hours ; it only requires to 
 be wound up once in ten months, and has never gone wrong 
 since I had it. These young brothers being thus occupied, 
 my usual companions in that family, when I went abroad, 
 were my host or his daughter. Now, agreeably with the 
 honourable conclusions I had come to, I began to excuse 
 myself from Zee's invitations to go out alone with her, and 
 seized an occasion when that learned Gy was delivering a lec- 
 ture at the College of Sages to ask Aph-Lin to show me his 
 country-seat. As this was at some little distance, and as 
 Aph-Lin was not fond of walking, while I had discreetly re- 
 linquished all attempts at flying, we proceeded to our desti- 
 nation in one of the aerial boats belonging to my host. A 
 child of eight years old, in his employ, w^as our conductor. 
 My host and myself reclined on cushions, and I found the 
 movement very easy and luxurioug. 
 
 "Aph-Lin," said I, "you will not, I trust, be displeased 
 with me, if I ask your permission to travel for a short time, 
 and visit other tribes or communities of your illustrious race. 
 I have also a strong desire to see those nations which do not 
 adopt your institutions, and which you consider as savages. 
 It would interest me greatly to notice what are the distinc- 
 tions between them and the races whom we consider civilized 
 in the world I have left." 
 
 "It is utterly impossible that you should go hence alone," 
 said Aph-Lin. "Even among the Vril-ya you would be ex- 
 posed to great dangers. Certain peculiarities of formation 
 and colour, and the extraordinary phenomenon of hirsute 
 bushes upon your cheeks and chin, denoting in you a species 
 
THE COMING RACE. 349 
 
 of An distinct alike from our race and any known race of 
 barbarians yet extant, would attract, of course, the special 
 attention of the College of Sages in whatever community of 
 Vril-ya you visited; and it would depend upon the individual 
 temper of some individual sage whether you would be re- 
 ceived, as you have been here, hospitably, or whether you 
 would not be at once dissected for scientific purposes. Know 
 that when the Tur first took you to his house, and while you 
 were there put to sleep by Tae in order to recover from your 
 previous pain or fatigue, the sages summoned by the Tur were 
 divided in opinion whether you were a harmless or an ob- 
 noxious animal. During your unconscious state your teeth 
 were examined, and they clearly showed that you were not 
 only graminivorous, but carnivorous. Carnivorous animals 
 of your size are always destroyed, as being of dangerous and 
 savage nature. Our teeth, as you have doubtless observed, ^ 
 are not those of the creatures who devour flesh. It is, in- 
 deed, maintained by Zee and other philosophers that as, in 
 remote ages, the Ana did prey upon living beings of the 
 brute species, their teeth must have been fitted for that pur- 
 pose ; but, even if so, they have been modified by hereditary 
 transmission, and suited to the food on which we now exist; 
 nor are even the barbarians, who adopt the turbulent and 
 ferocious institutions of Glek-Nas, devourers of flesh like 
 beasts of prey. 
 
 " In the course of this dispute it was proposed to dissect 
 you; but Tae begged you off, and the Tur being, by ofl&ce, 
 averse to all novel experiments at variance with our custom 
 of sparing life, except where it is clearly proved to be for the 
 good of the community to take it, sent to me, whose business 
 it is, as the richest man of the State, to afford hospitality to 
 strangers from a distance. It was at my option to decide 
 whether or not you were a stranger whom I could safely ad- 
 mit. Had I declined to receive you, you would have been 
 handed over to the College of Sages, and what might there 
 have befallen you I do not like to conjecture. Apart from 
 
 1 I never had observed it ; and, if I had, am not physiologist enough to 
 have distinguished the difference. 
 
350 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 this danger, you might chance to encounter some child of four 
 years old, just put in possession of his vril staff; and who, in 
 alarm at your strange appearance, and in the impulse of the 
 moment, might reduce you to a cinder. Tae himself was 
 about to do so when he first saw you, had his father not 
 checked his hand. Therefore I say you cannot travel alone ; 
 but with Zee you would be safe, and I have no doubt that 
 she would accompany you on a tour round the neighbouring 
 communities of Vril-ya (to the savage States, No!). I will 
 ask her." 
 
 Now, as my main object in proposing to travel was to es- 
 cape from Zee, I hastily exclaimed, "Nay, pray do not! I 
 relinquish my design. You have said enough as to its dan- 
 gers to deter me from it; and I can scarcely think it right 
 that a young Gy of the personal attractions of your lovely 
 daughter should travel into other regions without a better 
 protector than a Tish of my insignificant strength and 
 stature." 
 
 Aph-Lin emitted the soft sibilant sound which is the 
 nearest approach to laughter that a full-grown An permits 
 to himself ere he replied : " Pardon my discourteous but mo- 
 mentary indulgence of mirth at any observation seriously 
 made by my guest. I could not but be amused at the idea of 
 Zee, who is so fond of protecting others that children call 
 her *THE GUARDIAN,' needing a protector herself against any 
 dangers arising from the audacious admiration of males. 
 Know that our Gy-ei, while unmarried, are accustomed to 
 travel alone among other tribes, to see if they find there some 
 An who may please them more than the Ana they find at 
 home. Zee has already made three such journeys, but hitherto 
 her heart has been untouched." 
 
 Here the opportunity which I sought was afforded to me, 
 and I said, looking down, and with faltering voice, "Will 
 you, my kind host, promise to pardon me, if what I am about 
 to say gives you offence? " 
 
 " Say only the truth, and I cannot be offended ; or, could I 
 be so, it would be not for me, but for you to pardon." 
 
 "Well, then, assist me to quit you, and, much as I should 
 
THE COMING RACE. 351 
 
 have liked, to witness more of the wonders, and enjoy more 
 of the felicity, which belong to your people, let me return to 
 my own," 
 
 " I fear there are reasons why I cannot do that ; at all events, 
 not without permission of the Tur, and he probably would 
 not grant it. You are not destitute of intelligence; you may 
 (though I do not think so) have concealed the degree of de- 
 structive powers possessed by your people; you might, in 
 short, bring upon us some danger; and if the Tur entertains 
 that idea, it would clearly be his duty either to put an end to 
 you, or enclose you in a cage for the rest of your existence. 
 But why should you wish to leave a state of society which 
 you so politely allow to be more felicitous than your own?" 
 
 "Oh, Aph-Lin! my answer is plain. Lest in aught, and 
 unwittingly, I should betray your hospitality; lest, in that 
 caprice of will which in our world is proverbial among the 
 other sex, and from which even a Gy is not free, your adora- 
 ble daughter should deign to regard me, though a Tish, as if 
 I were a civilized An, and — and — and — " 
 
 "Court you as her spouse," put in Aph-Lin, gravely, and 
 without any visible sign of surprise or displeasure. 
 
 "You have said it." 
 
 "That would be a misfortune," resumed my host, after a 
 pause ; " and I feel that you have acted as you ought in warn- 
 ing me. It is, as you imply, not uncommon for an unwedded 
 Gy to conceive tastes as to the object she covets which appear 
 w^himsical to others ; but there is no power to compel a young 
 Gy to any course opposed to that which she chooses to pursue. 
 All we can do is to reason with her, and experience tells us 
 that the whole College of Sages would find it vain to reason 
 with a Gy in a matter that concerns her choice in love. I 
 grieve for you, because such a marriage would be against the 
 Aglauran, or good of the community, for the children of such 
 a marriage would adulterate the race: they might even come 
 into the world with the teeth of carnivorous animals; this 
 could not be allowed. Zee, as a Gy, cannot be controlled; 
 but you, as a Tish, can be destroyed. I advise you, then, to 
 resist her addresses ; to tell her plainly that you can never 
 
352 . THE COMING RACE. 
 
 return her love. This happens constantly. Many an An, 
 however ardently wooed by one Gy, rejects her, and puts an 
 end to her persecution by wedding another. The same course 
 is open to you." 
 
 *' No ; for I cannot wed another Gy without equally injur- 
 ing the community, and exposing it to the chance of rearing 
 carnivorous children." 
 
 "That is true. All I can say, and I say it with the tender- 
 ness due to a Tish, and the respect due to a guest, is frankly 
 this, — if you yield, you will become a cinder. I must leave 
 it to you to take the best way you can to defend yourself. 
 Perhaps you had better tell Zee that she is ugly. That assur- 
 ance on the lips of him she woos generally suffices to chill the 
 most ardent Gy. Here we are at my country-house." 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 I CONFESS that my conversation with Aph-Lin, and the ex- 
 treme coolness with which he stated his inability to control 
 the dangerous caprice of his daughter, and treated the idea of 
 the reduction into a cinder to which her amorous flame might 
 expose my too seductive person, took aAvay the pleasure I 
 should otherwise have had in the contemplation of my host's 
 country-seat, and the astonishing perfection of the machinery 
 by which his farming operations were conducted. The house 
 differed in appearance from the massive and sombre building 
 which Aph-Lin inhabited in the city, and which seemed akin 
 to the rocks out of which the city itself had been hewn into 
 shape. The walls of the country-seat were composed by trees 
 placed a few feet apart from each other, the interstices being 
 filled in with the transparent metallic substance which serves 
 the purpose of glass among the Ana. These trees were all in 
 flower, and the effect was very pleasing, if not in the best 
 taste. We were received at the porch by lifelike automata, 
 who conducted us into a chamber, the like to which I never 
 
THE COMING RACE. 353 
 
 saw before, but have often on summer days dreamily imagined. 
 It was a bower, — half room, half garden. The walls were 
 one mass of climbing flowers. The open spaces, which we 
 call windows, and in which, here, the metallic surfaces were 
 slided back, commanded various views, — some, of the wide 
 landscape with its lakes and rocks; some, of small limited 
 expanse answering to our conservatories, filled with tiers of 
 flowers. Along the sides of the room were flower-beds, inter- 
 spersed with cushions for repose. In the centre of the floor 
 were a cistern and a fountain of that liquid light which I 
 have presumed to be naphtha. It was luminous, and of a 
 roseate hue; it sufficed without lamps to light up the room 
 with a subdued radiance. All around the fountain was car- 
 peted with a soft deep lichen, not green (I have never seen 
 that colour in the vegetation of this country), but a quiet 
 brown, on which the eye reposes with the same sense of relief 
 as that with which in the upper world it reposes on green. 
 In the outlets upon flowers (which I have compared to our 
 conservatories) there were singing-birds innumerable, which, 
 while we remained in the room, sang in those harmonies of 
 tune to which they are, in these parts, so wonderfully trained. 
 The roof was open. The whole scene had charms for every 
 sense, — music from the birds, fragrance from the flowers, 
 and varied beauty to the eye at every aspect. About all was 
 a voluptuous repose. "What a place, methought, for a honey- 
 moon, if a Gy bride were a little less formidably armed not 
 only with the rights of woman, but with the powers of man! 
 but when one thinks of a Gy so learned, so tall, so stately, so 
 much above the standard of the creature we call woman, as 
 was Zee, — no! even if I had felt no fear of being reduced to 
 a cinder, it is not of her I should have dreamed in that bower 
 so constructed for dreams of poetic love. 
 
 The automata reappeared, serving one of those delicious 
 liquids which form the innocent wines of the Vril-ya. 
 
 "Truly," said I, "this is a charming residence, and I can 
 scarcely conceive why you do not settle yourself here instead 
 of amid the gloomier abodes of the city." 
 
 "As responsible to the community for the administration 
 
 23 
 
354 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 of light, I am compelled to reside chiefly in the city, and can 
 only come hither for short intervals." 
 
 " But since I understand from you that no honours are at- 
 tached to your office, and it involves some trouble, why do 
 you accept it? " 
 
 "Each of us obeys without question the command of the 
 Tur. He said, 'Be it requested that Aph-Lin shall be Com- 
 missioner of Light,' so I had no choice; but having held the 
 office now for a long time, the cares, which were at first un- 
 welcome, have become, if not pleasing, at least endurable. 
 We are all formed by custom, — even the difference of our 
 race from the savage is but the transmitted continuance of 
 custom, which becomes, through hereditary descent, part and 
 parcel of our nature. You see there are Ana who even recon- 
 cile themselves to the responsibilities of chief magistrate ; but 
 no one would do so if his duties had not been rendered so 
 light, or if there were any questions as to compliance with 
 his requests." 
 
 "Not even if you thought the requests unwise or unjust? " 
 
 " We do not allow ourselves to think so ; and indeed, every- 
 thing goes on as if each and all governed themselves accord- 
 ing to immemorial custom." 
 
 "When the chief magistrate dies or retires, how do you 
 provide for his successor? " 
 
 " The An who has discharged the duties of chief magistrate 
 for many years is the best person to choose one by whom 
 those duties may be understood, and he generally names his 
 successor." 
 
 "His son, perhaps? " 
 
 "Seldom that; for it is not an office any one desires or 
 seeks, and a father naturally hesitates to constrain his son. 
 But if the Tur himself decline to make a choice, for fear it 
 might be supposed that he owed some grudge to the person 
 on whom his choice would settle, then there are three of the 
 College of Sages who draw lots among themselves which shall 
 have the power to elect the chief. We consider that the judg- 
 ment of one An of ordinary capacity is better than the judg- 
 ment of three or more, however wise they may be ; for among 
 
THE COMING RACE. 355 
 
 three there would probably be disputes, and where there are 
 disputes, passion clouds judgment. The worst choice made 
 by one who has no motive in choosing wrong, is better than 
 the best choice made by many who have many motives for not 
 choosing right." 
 
 "You reverse in your policy the maxims adopted in my 
 country." 
 
 "Are you all, in your country, satisfied with your 
 governors? " 
 
 "All! certainly not; the governors that most please some 
 are sure to be those most displeasing to others." 
 
 "Then our system is better than yours." 
 
 " For you it may be ; but according to our system a Tish 
 could not be reduced to a cinder if a female compelled him to 
 marry her; and as a Tish I sigh to return to my native 
 world." 
 
 "Take courage, my dear little guest; Zee can't compel you 
 to marry her, — she can only entice you to do so. Don't be 
 enticed. Come and look round my domain." 
 
 We went forth into a close, bordered with sheds ; for though 
 the Ana keep no stock for food, there are some animals which 
 they rear for milking and others for shearing. The former 
 have no resemblance to our cows, nor the latter to our sheep, 
 nor do I believe such species exist amongst them. They use 
 the milk of three varieties of animal : one resembles the ante- 
 lope, but is much larger, being as tall as a camel; the other 
 two are smaller, and, though differing somewhat from each 
 other, resemble no creature I ever saw on earth. They are 
 very sleek and of rounded proportions ; their colour that of 
 the dappled deer, with very mild countenances and beautiful 
 dark eyes. The milk of these three creatures differs in rich- 
 ness and in taste. It is usually diluted with water, and 
 flavoured with the juice of a peculiar and perfumed fruit, and 
 in itself is very nutritious and palatable. The animal whose 
 fleece serves them for clothing and many other purposes is 
 more like the Italian she-goat than any other creature, but 
 is considerably larger, has no horns, and is free from the dis- 
 pleasing odour of our goats. Its fleece is not thick, but very 
 
356 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 long and fine; it varies in colour, but is never white, more 
 generally of a slate-like or lavender liue. For clothing it is 
 usually worn dyed to suit the taste of the wearer. These ani- 
 mals were exceedingly tame, and were treated with extraordi- 
 nary care and affection by the children (chiefly female) who 
 tended them. 
 
 We then went through vast storehouses filled with grains 
 and fruits. I may here observe that the main staple of food 
 among these people consists, firstly, of a kind of corn much 
 larger in ear than our wheat, and which by culture is per- 
 petually being brought into new varieties of flavour; and, 
 secondly, of a fruit of about the size of a small orange, which, 
 when gathered, is hard and bitter. It is stowed away for 
 many months in their warehouses, and then becomes succu- 
 lent and tender. Its juice, which is of dark-red colour, enters 
 into most of their sauces. They have many kinds of fruit of 
 the nature of the olive, from which delicious oils are ex- 
 tracted. They have a plant somewhat resembling the sugar- 
 cane, but its juices are less sweet and of a delicate perfume. 
 They have no bees nor honey-kneading insects, but they make 
 much use of a sweet gum that oozes from a coniferous plant, 
 not unlike the araucaria. Their soil teems also with esculent 
 roots and vegetables, which it is the aim of their culture to 
 improve and vary to the utmost. And I never remember any 
 meal among this people, however it might be confined to the 
 family household, in which some delicate novelty in such 
 articles of food was not introduced. In fine, as I before ob- 
 served, their cookery is exquisite, so diversified and nutritious 
 that one does not miss animal food; and their own physical 
 forms suffice to show that with them, at least, meat is not 
 required for superior production of muscular fibre. They 
 have no grapes, — the drinks extracted from their fruits are 
 innocent and refreshing. Their staple beverage, however, is 
 water, in the choice of which they are very fastidious, dis- 
 tinguishing at once the slightest impurity. 
 
 "My younger son takes great pleasure in augmenting our 
 produce," said Aph-Lin, as we passed through the store- 
 houses, "and therefore will inherit these lands, which con- 
 
THE COMING RACE. 357 
 
 stitute the chief part of my wealth. To my elder son such 
 inheritance would be a great trouble and affliction." 
 
 "Are there many sons among you who think the inheritance 
 of vast wealth would be a great trouble and affliction?" 
 
 "Certainly; there are indeed very few of the Vril-ya who 
 do not consider that a fortune much above the average is a 
 heavy burden. We are rather a lazy people after the age of 
 childhood, and do not like undergoing more cares than we can 
 help, and great wealth does give its owner many cares. For 
 instance, it marks us out for public offices, which none of us 
 like and none of us can refuse. It necessitates our taking a 
 continued interest in the affairs of any of our poorer country- 
 men, so that we may anticipate their wants and see that none 
 fall into poverty. There is an old proverb amongst us which 
 says, 'The poor man's need is the rich man's shame — ' " 
 
 "Pardon me, if I interrupt you for a moment. You then 
 allow that some, even of the Vril-ya, know want, and need 
 relief? " 
 
 "If by want you mean the destitution that prevails in a 
 Koom-Posh, that is impossible with us, unless an An has, by 
 some extraordinary process, got rid of all his means, cannot 
 or will not emigrate, and has either tired out the affectionate 
 aid of his relations or personal friends, or refuses to ac- 
 cept it." 
 
 " Well, then, does he not supply the place of an infant or 
 automaton, and become a labourer, a servant?" 
 
 "Ko; then we regard him as an unfortunate person of un- 
 sound reason, and place him, at the expense of the State, in a 
 public building, where every comfort and every luxury that 
 can mitigate his affliction are lavished upon him. But an An 
 does not like to be considered out of his mind, and therefore 
 such cases occur so seldom that the public building I speak of 
 is now a deserted ruin, and the last inmate of it was an An 
 whom I recollect to have seen in my childhood. He did not 
 seem conscious of loss of reason, and wrote glaubs (poetry). 
 When I spoke of wants, I meant such wants as an An with 
 desires larger than his means sometimes entertains, — for ex- 
 pensive singing-birds, or bigger houses, or country-gardens; ' 
 
358 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 and the obvious way to satisfy sucli wants is to buy of him 
 something that he sells. Hence Ana like myself, who are 
 very rich, are obliged to buy a great many things they do not 
 require, and live on a very large scale where they might pre- 
 fer to live on a small one. For instance, the great size of my 
 house in the town is a source of much trouble to my wife, and 
 even to myself; but I am compelled to have it thus incommo- 
 diously large, because, as the richest An of the community, I 
 am appointed to entertain the strangers from the other com- 
 munities when they visit us, which they do in great crowds 
 twice a year, when certain periodical entertainments are held, 
 and when relations scattered throughout all the realms of the 
 Vril-ya joyfully reunite for a time. This hospitality, on a 
 scale so extensive, is not to my taste, and therefore I should 
 have been happier had I been less rich. But we must all 
 bear the lot assigned to us in this short passage through time 
 that we call life. After all, what are a hundred years, more 
 or less, to the ages through which we must pass hereafter? 
 Luckily, I have one son who likes great wealth. It is a rare 
 exception to the general rule, and I own I cannot myself un- 
 derstand it." 
 
 After this conversation I sought to return to the subject 
 which continued to weigh on my heart, — namely, the chances 
 of escape from Zee; but my host politely declined to renew 
 that topic, and summoned our air-boat. On our way back we 
 were met by Zee, who, having found us gone, on her return 
 from the College of Sages, had unfurled her wings and flown 
 in search of us. 
 
 Her grand, but to me unalluring, countenance brightened 
 as she beheld me, and poising herself beside the boat on her 
 large outspread plumes, she said reproachfully to Aph-Lin, 
 " Oh, Father, was it right in you to hazard the life of your 
 guest in a vehicle to which he is so unaccustomed? He 
 might, by an incautious movement, fall over the side; and, 
 alas! he is not like us, — he has no wings. It were death to 
 him to fall. — Dear one ! " she added, accosting my shrinking 
 self in a softer voice, " have you no thought of me, that you 
 should thus hazard a life which has become almost a part of 
 
THE COMING RACE. 359 
 
 mine? Never again be thus rash, unless I am thy companion. 
 What terror thou hast stricken into me ! " 
 
 I ghmced furtively at Aph-Lin, expecting, at least, that he 
 would indignantly reprove his daughter for expressions of 
 anxiety and affection, which, under all the circumstances, 
 would, in the world above ground, be considered immodest in 
 the lips of a young female, addressed to a male not affianced 
 to her, even if of the same rank as herself. 
 
 But so confirmed are the rights of females in that region, 
 and so absolutely foremost among those rights do females 
 claim the privilege of courtship, that Aph-Lin would no more 
 have thought of reproving his virgin daughter than he would 
 have thought of disobeying the Tur. In that country, cus- 
 tom, as he implied, is all and all. 
 
 He answered mildly, " Zee, the Tish was in no danger, and 
 it is my belief that he can take very good care of himself." 
 
 "I would rather that he let me charge myself with his care. 
 
 heart of my heart, it was in the thought of thy danger that 
 
 1 first felt how much I loved thee ! " 
 
 Never did man feel in so false a position as I did. These 
 words were spoken aloud in the hearing of Zee's father, in 
 the hearing of the child who steered. I blushed with shame 
 for them, and for her, and could not help replying angrily : 
 "Zee, either you mock me, which, as your father's guest, 
 misbecomes you, or the words you utter are improper for a 
 maiden Gy to address even to an An of her own race, if he 
 has not wooed her with the consent of her parents. How 
 much more improper to address them to a Tish, who has 
 never presumed to solicit your affections, and who can never 
 regard you with other sentiments than those of reverence and 
 awe! " 
 
 Aph-Lin made me a covert sign of approbation, but said 
 nothing. 
 
 " Be not so cruel ! " exclaimed Zee, still in sonorous ac- 
 cents. "Can love command itself where it is truly felt? 
 Do you suppose that a maiden Gy will conceal a sentiment 
 that it elevates her to feel? What a country you must have 
 come from ! " 
 
360 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 Here Aph-Lin gently interposed, saying, "Among the 
 Tish-a the rights of your sex do not appear to be established ; 
 and at all events my guest may converse with you more freely 
 if unchecked by the presence of others." 
 
 To this remark Zee made no reply, but, darting on me 
 a tender reproachul glance, agitated her wings and fled 
 homeward. 
 
 "I had counted, at least, on some aid from my host," said 
 I, bitterly, " in the perils to which his own daughter exposes 
 me." 
 
 " I gave you the best aid I could. To contradict a Gy in her 
 love affairs is to confirm her purpose. She allows no counsel 
 to come between her and her affections." 
 
 CHAPTEIC XXIV. 
 
 On alighting from the air-boat, a child accosted Aph-Lin 
 in the hall with a request that he would be present at the 
 funeral obsequies of a relation who had recently departed 
 from that nether world. 
 
 Now, I had never seen a burial-place or cemetery amongst 
 this people, and, glad to seize even so melancholy an occasion 
 to defer an encounter with Zee, I asked Aph-Lin if I might 
 be permitted to witness with him the interment of his rela- 
 tion; unless, indeed, it were regarded as one of those sacred 
 ceremonies to which a stranger to their race might not be 
 admitted. 
 
 "The departure of an An to a happier world," answered 
 my host, " when, as in the case of my kinsman, he has lived 
 so long in this as to have lost pleasure in it, is rather a cheer- 
 ful though quiet festival than a sacred ceremony, and you 
 may accompany me if you will." 
 
 Preceded by the child-messenger, we walked up the main 
 street to a house at some little distance, and, entering the 
 hall, were conducted to a room on the ground-floor, where we 
 
THE COMING RACE. 361 
 
 found several persons assembled round a couch on which was 
 laid the deceased. It was an old man, who had, as I was 
 told, lived beyond his one hundred and thirtieth year. To 
 judge by the calm smile on his countenance, he had passed 
 away without suffering. One of the sons, who was now the 
 head of the family, and who seemed in vigorous middle life, 
 though he was considerably more than seventy, stepped for- 
 ward with a cheerful face and told Aph-Lin that the day be- 
 fore he died his father had seen in a dream his departed Gy, 
 and was eager to be reunited to her, and restored to youth 
 beneath the nearer smile of the All-Good. 
 
 While these two were talking, my attention was drawn to a 
 dark metallic substance at the farther end of the room. It 
 was about twenty feet in length, narrow in proportion, and 
 all closed round, save, near the roof, there were small round 
 holes through which might be seen a red light. From the in- 
 terior emanated a rich and sweet perfume ; and while I was 
 conjecturing what purpose this machine was to serve, all the 
 timepieces in the town struck the hour with their solemn 
 musical chime; and as that sound ceased, music of a more 
 joyous character, but still of a joy subdued and tranquil, rang 
 throughout the chamber, and from the walls beyond, in a 
 choral peal. Symphonious with the melody, those present 
 lifted their voice in chant. The words of this hymn were 
 simple. They expressed no regret, no farewell, but rather 
 a greeting to the new world whither the deceased had pre- 
 ceded the living. Indeed, in their language, the funeral 
 hymn is called the "Birth Song." Then the corpse, covered 
 by a long cerement, was tenderly lifted up by six of the 
 nearest kinsfolk, and borne towards the dark thing I have 
 described. I pressed forward to see what happened. A slid- 
 ing door or panel at one end was lifted up, the body de- 
 posited within, on a shelf, the door reclosed, a spring at the 
 side touched, a sudden whisking, sighing sound heard from 
 within; and lo! at the other end of the machine the lid fell 
 down, and a small handful of smouldering dust dropped into 
 a patera placed to receive it. The son took up the patera and 
 said (in what I understood afterwards was the usual form of 
 
362 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 words), "Behold how great is the Maker! To this little dust 
 He gave form and life and soul. It needs not this little dust 
 for Him to renew form and life and soul to the beloved one 
 we shall soon see again." 
 
 Each present bowed his head and pressed his hand to his 
 heart. Then a young female child opened a small door within 
 the wall, and I perceived, in the recess, shelves on which 
 were placed many paterce like that which the son held, save 
 that they all had covers. With such a cover a Gy now ap- 
 proached the son, and placed it over the cup, on which it 
 closed with a spring. On the lid were engraven the name of 
 the deceased, and these words : " Lent to us " (here the date 
 of birth). "Recalled from us " (here the date of death). 
 
 The closed door shut with a musical sound, and all was 
 over. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 "And this," said I, with my mind full of what I had 
 witnessed, — "this, I presume, is your usual form of burial? " 
 
 "Our invariable form," answered Aph-Lin. "What is it 
 amongst your people? " 
 
 "We inter the body whole within the earth." 
 
 "What! to degrade the form you have loved and honoured, 
 the wife on whose breast you have slept, to the loathsomeness 
 of corruption? " 
 
 "But if the soul lives again, can it matter whether the 
 body waste within the earth or is reduced by that awful 
 mechanism, worked, no doubt by the agency of vril, into a 
 pinch of dust? " 
 
 "You answer well," said my host, "and there is no arguing 
 on a matter of feeling; but to me your custom is horrible and 
 repulsive, and would serve to invest death with gloomy and 
 hideous associations. It is something, too, to my mind, to be 
 able to preserve the token of what has been our kinsman or 
 friend within the abode in which we live. We thus feel more 
 
THE COMING RACE. 363 
 
 sensibly that he still lives, though not visibly so to us. But 
 our sentiments in this, as in all things, are created by cus- 
 tom. Custom is not to be changed by a wise An, any more 
 than it is changed by a wise Community, without the gravest 
 deliberation, followed by the most earnest conviction. It is 
 only thus that change ceases to be changeability, and once 
 made is made for good." 
 
 When we regained the house, Aph-Lin summoned some of 
 the children in his service and sent them round to several of 
 his friends, requesting their attendance that day, during the 
 Easy Hours, to a festival in honour of his kinsman's recall 
 to the All-Good. This was the largest and gayest assembly 
 I ever witnessed during my stay among the Ana, and was 
 prolonged far into the Silent Hours. 
 
 The banquet was spread in a vast chamber reserved especi- 
 ally for grand occasions. This differed from our entertain- 
 ments, and was not without a certain resemblance to those 
 we read of in the luxurious age of the Roman empire. There 
 was not one great table set out, but numerous small tables, 
 each appropriated to eight guests. It is considered that be- 
 yond that number conversation languishes and friendship 
 cools. The Ana never laugh loud, as I have before observed, 
 but the cheerful ring of their voices at the various tables be- 
 tokened gayety of intercourse. As they have no stimulant 
 drinks, and are temperate in food, though so choice and 
 dainty, the banquet itself did not last long. The tables sank 
 through the floor, and then came musical entertainments for 
 those who liked them. Many, however, wandered away : some 
 of the younger ascended on their wings, for the hall was roof- 
 less, forming aerial dances; others strolled through the vari- 
 ous apartments, examining the curiosities with which they 
 were stored, or formed themselves into groups for various 
 games, the favourite of which is a complicated kind of chess 
 played by eight persons. I mixed with the crowd, but was 
 prevented joining in their conversation by the constant com- 
 panionship of one or the other of my host's sons, appointed 
 to keep me from obtrusive questionings. The guests, how- 
 ever, noticed me but slightly; they had grown accustomed to 
 
364 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 my appearance, seeing me so often in the streets, and I had 
 ceased to excite much curiosity. 
 
 To my great delight Zee avoided me, and evidently sought 
 to excite my jealousy by marked attentions to a very hand- 
 some young An, who (though, as is the modest custom of the 
 males when addressed by females, he answered with down- 
 cast eyes and blushing cheeks, and was demure and shy as 
 young ladies new to the world are in most civilized countries, 
 except England and America) was evidently much charmed 
 by the tall Gy, and ready to falter a bashful " Yes " if she 
 had actually proposed. Fervently hoping that she would, 
 and more and more averse to the idea of reduction to a cinder 
 after I had seen the rapidity with which a human body can be 
 hurried into a pinch of dust, I amused myself by watching the 
 manners of the other young people. I had the satisfaction 
 of observing that Zee was no singular asserter of a female's 
 most valued rights. Wherever I turned my eyes, or lent 
 my ears, it seemed to me that the Gy was the wooing party, 
 and the An the coy and reluctant one. The pretty innocent 
 airs which an An gave himself on being thus courted, the 
 dexterity with which he evaded direct answer to professions 
 of attachment, or turned into jest the flattering compliments 
 addressed to him, would have done honour to the most accom- 
 plished coquette. Both my male chajjerons were subjected 
 greatly to these seductive influences, and both acquitted 
 themselves with wonderful honour to their tact and self- 
 control. 
 
 I said to the elder son, who preferred mechanical employ- 
 ments to the management of a great property, and who was of 
 an eminently philosophical temperament, "I find it difficult 
 to conceive how at your age, and with all the intoxicating 
 effects on the senses, of music and lights and perfumes, you 
 can be so cold to that impassioned Gy who has just left you 
 with tears in her eyes at your cruelty." 
 
 The young An replied with a sigh, "Gentle Tish, the great- 
 est misfortune in life is to marry one Gy if you are in love 
 with another." 
 
 "Oh, you are in love with another? " 
 
THE COMING RACE. 365 
 
 "Alas! yes." 
 
 "And she does not return your love? " 
 
 "I don't know. Sometimes a look, a tone, makes me hope 
 so; but she has never plainly told me that she loves me." 
 
 "Have you not whispered in her own ear that you love 
 her? " 
 
 "Fie! what are you thinking of? What world do you 
 come from? Could I so betray the dignity of my sex? 
 Could I be so un-Anly, so lost to shame, as to own love to 
 a Gy who has not first owned hers to me?" 
 
 "Pardon; I was not quite aware that you pushed the mod- 
 esty of your sex so far. But does no An ever say to a Gy, ' I 
 love you,' till she says it first to him? " 
 
 "I can't say that no An has ever done so, but if he ever 
 does, he is disgraced in the eyes of the Ana, and secretly de- 
 spised by the Gy-ei. No Gy, well brought up, would listen 
 to him; she would consider that he audaciously infringed on 
 the rights of her sex, while outraging the modesty which dig- 
 nifies his own. It is very provoking," continued the An, 
 " for she whom I love has certainly courted no one else, and I 
 cannot but think she likes me. Sometimes I suspect that she 
 does not court me because she fears I would ask some unrea- 
 sonable settlement as to the surrender of her rights ; but if 
 so, she cannot really love me, for where a Gy really loves 
 she foregoes all rights." 
 
 "Is this young Gy present? " 
 
 "Oh, yes. She sits yonder talking to my mother." 
 
 I looked in the direction to which my eyes were thus 
 guided, and saw a Gy dressed in robes of bright red, which 
 among this people is a sign that a Gy as yet prefers a single 
 state. She wears gray, a neutral tint, to indicate that she is 
 looking about for a spouse ; dark purple if she wishes to inti- 
 mate that she has made a choice; purple and orange when 
 she is betrothed or married; light blue when she is divorced 
 or a widow and would marry again. Light blue is of course 
 seldom seen. 
 
 Among a people where all are of so high a type of beauty, 
 it is difficult to single out one as peculiarly handsome. My 
 
366 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 young friend's choice seemed to me to possess the average of 
 good looks; but there was an expression in her face that 
 pleased me more than did the faces of the young Gy-ei gener- 
 ally, because it looked less bold, less conscious of female 
 rights. I observed that, while she talked to Bra, she glanced, 
 from time to time, sidelong at my young friend. 
 
 "Courage," said I; "that young Gy loves you." 
 
 "Ay, but if she will not say so, how am I the better for her 
 love." 
 
 "Your mother is aware of your attachment? " 
 
 "Perhaps so. I never owned it to her. It would be un- 
 Anly to confide such weakness to a mother. I have told my 
 father; he may have told it again to his wife." 
 
 "Will you permit me to quit you for a moment and glide 
 behind your mother and your beloved? I am sure they are 
 talking about you. Do not hesitate. I promise that I will 
 not allow myself to be questioned till I rejoin you." 
 
 The young An pressed his hand on his heart, touched me 
 lightly on the head, and allowed me to quit his side. I stole 
 unobserved behind his mother and his beloved. I overheard 
 their talk. 
 
 Bra was speaking; said she, "There can be no doubt of 
 this : either my son, who is of marriageable age, will be de- 
 coyed into marriage with one of his many suitors, or he will 
 join those who emigrate to a distance and we shall see him 
 no more. If you really care for him, my dear Lo, you should 
 propose." 
 
 "I do care for him, Bra; but I doubt if I could really ever 
 win his affections. He is fond of his inventions and time- 
 pieces; and I am not like Zee, but so dull that I fear I could 
 not enter into his favourite pursuits, and then he would get 
 tired of me, and at the end of three years divorce me, and I 
 could never marry another, — never!" 
 
 " It is not necessary to know about timepieces to know how 
 to be so necessary to the happiness of an An who cares for 
 timepieces that he would rather give up the timepieces than 
 divorce his Gy. You see, my dear Lo," continued Bra, "that 
 precisely because we are the stronger sex, we rule the other, 
 
THE COMING RACE. 367 
 
 provided we never show our strength. If you were superior 
 to my son in making timepieces and automata, you should, 
 as his wife, always let him suppose you thought him superior 
 in that art to yourself. The An tacitly allows the pre-emi- 
 nence of the Gy in all except his own special pursuit. But 
 if she either excels him in that, or affects not to admire him 
 for his proficiency in it, he will not love her very long; per- 
 haps he may even divorce her. But where a Gy really loves, 
 she soon learns to love all that the An does." 
 
 The young Gy made no answer to this address. She looked 
 down musingly, then a smile crept over her lips, and she rose, 
 still silent, and went through the crowd till she paused by the 
 young An who loved her. 1 followed her steps, but discreetly 
 stood at a little distance while I watched them. Somewhat 
 to my surprise, till I recollected the coy tactics among the 
 Ana, the lover seemed to receive her advances with an air of 
 indifference. He even moved away; but she pursued his 
 steps, and, a little time after, both spread their wings and 
 vanished amid the luminous space above. 
 
 Just then I was accosted by the chief magistrate, who min- 
 gled with the crowd distinguished by no signs of deference or 
 homage. It so happened that I had not seen this great digni- 
 tary since the day I had entered his dominions; and recalling 
 Aph-Lin's words as to his terrible doubt whether or not I 
 should be dissected, a shudder crept over me at the sight of 
 his tranquil countenance. 
 
 "I hear much of you, stranger, from my son Tae," said the 
 Tur, laying his hand politely on my bended head. "He is 
 very fond of your society, and I trust you are not displeased 
 with the customs of our people." 
 
 I muttered some unintelligible answer, which I intended to 
 be an assurance of my gratitude for the kindness I had re- 
 ceived from the Tur, and my admiration of his countrymen, 
 but the dissecting-knife gleamed before my mind's eye and 
 choked my utterance. A softer voice said, "My brother's 
 friend must be dear to me;" and looking up I saw a young 
 Gy, who might be sixteen years old, standing beside the mag- 
 istrate and gazing at me with a very benignant countenance. 
 
368 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 She had not come to her full growth, and was scarcely taller 
 than myself (namely, about five feet, ten inches), and, thanks 
 to that comi^aratively diminutive stature, I thought her the 
 loveliest Gy I had hitherto seen. I suppose something in my 
 eyes revealed that impression, for her countenance grew yet 
 more benignant. 
 
 "Tae tells me," she said, "that you have not yet learned to 
 accustom yourself to wings. That grieves me, for I should 
 have liked to fly with you." 
 
 "Alas!" I replied, "I can never hope to enjoy that happi- 
 ness. I am assured by Zee that the safe use of wings is a 
 hereditary gift, and it would take generations before one of 
 my race could poise himself in the air like a bird." 
 
 "Let not that thought vex you too much," replied this 
 amiable princess, "for, after all, there must come a day when 
 Zee and myself must resign our wings forever. Perhaps 
 when that day comes we might be glad if the An we chose 
 was also without wings." 
 
 The Tur had left us, and was lost amongst the crowd. I 
 began to feel at ease with Tae's charming sister, and rather 
 startled her by the boldness of my compliment in replying 
 "that no An she could choose would ever use his wings to fly 
 away from her." It is so against custom for an An to say such 
 civil things to a Gy till she has declared her passion for him, and 
 been accepted as his betrothed, that the young maiden stood 
 quite dumfounded for a few moments. Nevertheless she did 
 not seem displeased. At last recovering herself, she invited 
 me to accompany her into one of the less crowded rooms and 
 listen to the songs of the birds. I followed her steps as she 
 glided before me, and she led me into a chamber almost 
 deserted. A fountain of naphtha was playing in the centre 
 of the room; round it were ranged soft divans, and the walls 
 of the room were open on one side to an aviary in which the 
 birds were chanting their artful chorus. The Gy seated her- 
 self on one of the divans, and I placed myself at her side. 
 "Tae tells me," she said, "that Aph-Lin has made it the law ^ 
 
 ^ Literally " has said, In this house be it requested." Words S3-nonyinous 
 with law, as implylLg forcible obligatiou, are avoided by this singular people. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 369 
 
 of his house that you are not to be questioned as to the 
 country you come from or the reason why you visit us. 
 Is it so?" 
 
 "It is." 
 
 *' ]\Iay I, at least, without sinning against that law, ask at 
 least if the Gy-ei in your country are of the same pale colour 
 as yourself, and no taller? " 
 
 " I do not think, beautiful Gy, that I infringe the law of 
 Aph-Lin, Avhich is more binding on myself than any one, if I 
 answer questions so innocent. The Gy-ei in my country are 
 much fairer of hue than I am, and their average height is at 
 least a head shorter than mine." 
 
 "They cannot then be so strong as the Ana amongst you? 
 But I suppose their superior vril force makes up for such ex- 
 traordinary disadvantage of size? " 
 
 "They do not profess the vril force as jon know it. But 
 still they are very powerful in my country, and an An has 
 small chance of a happy life if he be not more or less governed 
 by his Gy." 
 
 "You speak feelingly," said Tae's sister, in a tone of voice 
 half sad, half petulant. "You are married, of course? " 
 
 "No, certainly not." 
 
 "Xor betrothed?" 
 
 "Nor betrothed." 
 
 "Is it possible that no Gy has proposed to you? " 
 
 "In my country the Gy does not propose; the An speaks 
 first." 
 
 " What a strange reversal of the laws of nature ! " said the 
 maiden, "and what want of modesty in your sex! But have 
 you never proposed, never loved one Gy more than another? " 
 
 I felt embarrassed by these ingenuous questionings, and 
 said, " Pardon me, but I think we are beginning to infringe 
 upon Aph-Lin 's injunction. Thus much only will I say in 
 answer, and then, I implore you, ask no more. I did once 
 
 Even had it been decreed by the Tur that his College of Sages should dissect 
 me, the decree would have ran blandly thus : " Be it requested that, for the 
 good of the community, the carnivorous Tish be requested to submit himself 
 to dissection." 
 
 24 
 
370 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 feel the preference you speak of; I did propose, and the Gy 
 would willingly have accepted me, but her parents refused 
 their consent." 
 
 " Parents ! Do you mean seriously to tell me that parents 
 can interfere with the choice of their daughters? " 
 
 "Indeed they can, and do very often." 
 
 "I should not like to live in that country," said the Gy, 
 simply; "but I hope you will never go back to it." 
 
 I bowed my head in silence. The Gy gently raised my 
 face with her right hand, and looked into it tenderly. " Stay 
 with us," she said; "stay with us, and be loved." 
 
 What I might have answered, what dangers of becoming a 
 cinder I might have encountered, I still tremble to think, 
 when the light of the naphtha fountain was obscured by the 
 shadow of wings; and Zee, flying through the open roof, 
 alighted beside us. She said not a word, but, taking my 
 arm with her mighty hand, she drew me away, as a mother 
 draws a naughty child, and led me through the apartments to 
 one of the corridors, on which, by the mechanism they gener- 
 ally prefer to stairs, we ascended to my own room. This 
 gained, Zee breathed on my forehead, touched my breast 
 with her staff, and I was instantly plunged into a profound 
 sleep. 
 
 When I awoke some hours later, and heard the song of the 
 birds in the adjoining aviary, the remembrance of Tae's 
 sister, her gentle looks and caressing words, vividly returned 
 to me; and so impossible is it for one born and reared in our 
 upper world's state of society to divest himself of ideas dic- 
 tated by vanity and ambition, that I found myself instinc- 
 tively building proud castles in the air. 
 
 "Tish though I be," thus ran my me^litations, — "Tish 
 though I be, it is then clear that Zee is not the only Gy 
 whom my appearance can captivate. Evidently I am loved 
 by A Princess, the first maiden of this land, the daughter of 
 the absolute Monarch whose autocracy they so idly seek to 
 disguise by the republican title of ' chief magistrate. ' But for 
 the sudden swoop of that horrible Zee, this Eoyal Lady would 
 have formally proposed to me; and though it may be very 
 
THE COMING RACE. 371 
 
 well for Aph-Lin, who is only a subordinate minister, a mere 
 Commissioner of Light, to threaten me with destruction if I 
 accept his daughter's hand, yet a Sovereign, whose word is 
 law, could compel the community to abrogate any custom 
 that forbids intermarriage with one of a strange race, and 
 which in itself is a contradiction to their boasted equality 
 of ranks. 
 
 "It is not to be supposed that his daughter, who spoke 
 with such incredulous scorn of the interference of parents, 
 would not have sufficient influence with her Royal Father to 
 save me from the combustion to which Aph-Lin would con- 
 demn my form. And if I were exalted by such an alliance, 
 who knows but what the Monarch might elect me as his suc- 
 cessor? Why not? Few among this indolent race of phi- 
 losophers like the burden of such greatness. All might be 
 pleased to see the supreme power lodged in the hands of an 
 accomplished stranger who has experience of other and live- 
 lier forms of existence; and, once chosen, what reforms I 
 would institute ! What additions to the really pleasant but 
 too monotonous life of this realm my familiarity with the civi- 
 lized nations above ground would effect! I am fond of the 
 sports of the field. Next to war, is not the chase a king's 
 pastime? In what varieties of strange game does this nether 
 world abound! How interesting to strike down creatures that 
 were known above ground before the Deluge! But how? 
 By that terrible vril, in which, from want of hereditary trans- 
 mission, I could never be a proficient? No, but by a civilized 
 handy breech-loader, which these ingenious mechanicians 
 could not only make, but no doubt improve; nay, surely I 
 saw one in the Museum. Indeed, as absolute king, I should 
 discountenance vril altogether, except in cases of war. 
 A propos of war, it is perfectly absurd to stint a people so 
 intelligent, so rich, so well armed, to a petty limit of terri- 
 tory sufficing for ten thousand or twelve thousand families. 
 Is not this restriction a mere philosophical crotchet, at vari- 
 ance with the aspiring element in human nature, such as has 
 been partially, and with complete failure, tried in the upper 
 world by the late Mr. Robert Owen. Of course one would 
 
372 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 not go to war with neighbouring nations as well armed as 
 one's own subjects; but then, what of those regions inhabited 
 by races unacquainted with vril, and apparently resembling, 
 in their democratic institutions, my American countrymen? 
 One might invade them without offence to the vril nations, 
 our allies, appropriate their territories, extending, perhaps, 
 to the most distant regions of the nether earth, and thus rule 
 over an empire in which the sun never sets. (I forgot, in 
 my enthusiasm, that over those regions there was no sun to 
 set.) As for the fantastical notion against conceding fame or 
 renown to an eminent individual, because, forsooth, bestowal 
 of honours insures contest in the pursuit of them, stimulates 
 angry passions, and mars the felicity of peace, — it is opposed 
 to the very elements, not only of the human but the brute 
 creation, which are all, if tamable, participators in the senti- 
 ment of praise and emulation. What renown would be given 
 to a king who thus extended his empire ! I should be deemed 
 a demigod." Thinking of that, the other fanatical notion of 
 regulating this life by reference to one which, no doubt, we 
 Christians firmly believe in, but never take into considera- 
 tion, I resolved that enlightened philosophy compelled me to 
 abolish a heatheii religion so superstitiously at variance with 
 modern thought and practical action. Musing over these va- 
 rious projects, I felt how much I should have liked at that 
 moment to brighten my wits by a good glass of whiskey-and- 
 water. Not that I am habitually a spirit-drinker, but cer- 
 tainly there are times when a little stimulant of alcoholic 
 nature, taken with a cigar, enlivens the imagination. Yes; 
 certainly among these herbs and fruits there would be a liquid 
 from which one could extract a pleasant vinous alcohol ; and 
 with a steak cut off one of those elks (ah, what offence to 
 science to reject the animal food which our first medical men 
 agree in recommending to the gastric juices of mankind!) one 
 would certainly pass a more exhilarating hour of repast. 
 Then, too, instead of those antiquated dramas performed by 
 childish amateurs, certainly when I am king, I will introduce 
 our modern opera and a corps de ballet, for which one might 
 find, among the nations I shall conquer, young females of less 
 
THE COMING RACE. 373 
 
 formidable height and thews than the Gy-ei, — not armed 
 with vril, and not insisting upon one's marrying them. 
 
 I was so completely wrapped in these and similar reforms, 
 political, social, and moral, calculated to bestow on the people 
 of the nether world the blessings of a civilization known to 
 the races of the upper, that I did not perceive that Zee had 
 entered the chamber till I heard a deep sigh, and raising my 
 eyes, beheld her standing by my couch. 
 
 I need not say that, according to the manners of this peo- 
 ple, a Gy can, without indecorum, visit an An in his cham- 
 ber, though an An would be considered forward and immodest 
 to the last degree if he entered the chamber of a Gy without 
 previously obtaining her permission to do so. Fortunately I 
 was in the full habiliments I had worn when Zee had de- 
 posited me on the couch. Nevertheless I felt much irritated, 
 as well as shocked, by her visit, and asked in a rude tone 
 what she wanted. 
 
 "Speak gently, beloved one, I entreat you," said she, "for 
 I am very unhappy. I have not slept since we parted." 
 
 "A due sense of your shameful conduct to me as your 
 father's guest might well suffice to banish sleep from your 
 eyelids. Where was the affection you pretend to have for 
 me, where was even that politeness on which the Vril-ya pride 
 themselves, when, taking advantage alike of that physical 
 strength in which your sex, in this extraordinary region, ex- 
 cels our own, and of those detestable and unhallowed powers 
 which the agencies of vril invest in your eyes and finger- 
 ends, you exposed me to humiliation before your assembled 
 visitors, before Her Royal Highness, — I mean, the daughter 
 of your own chief magistrate, — carrying me off to bed like a 
 naughty infant, and plunging me into sleep, without asking 
 my consent? " 
 
 "Ungrateful! Do you reproach me for the evidences of my 
 love? Can you think that, even if unstrung by the jealousy 
 which attends upon love till it fades away in blissful trust 
 when we know that the heart we have wooed is Avon, I could 
 be indifferent to the perils to which the audacious overtures 
 of that silly little child might expose you? " 
 
374 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 *• Hold ! Since you introduce the subject of perils, it per- 
 haps does not misbecome me to say that my most imminent 
 perils come from yourself, or at least would come if I be- 
 lieved in your love and accepted your addresses. Your father 
 has told me plainly that in that case I should be consumed 
 into a cinder with as little compunction as if I were the rep- 
 tile whom Tae blasted into ashes with the flash of his 
 wand." 
 
 "Do not let that fear chill your heart to me," exclaimed 
 Zee, dropping on her knees and absorbing my right hand in 
 the space of her ample palm. "It is true, indeed, that we 
 two cannot wed as those of the same race wed; true that the 
 love between us must be pure as that which, in our belief, 
 exists between lovers who reunite in the new life beyond that 
 boundary at which the old life ends. But is it not happiness 
 enough to be together, wedded in mind and in heart? Listen: 
 I have just left my father. He consents to our union on those 
 terms. I have sufficient influence with the College of Sages 
 to insure their request to the Tur not to interfere with the 
 free choice of a Gy, provided that her wedding with one of 
 another race be but the wedding of souls. Oh, think you that 
 true love needs ignoble union? It is not that I yearn only to 
 be by your side in this life, to be part and parcel of your joys 
 and sorrows here : I ask here for a tie which will bind us for- 
 ever and forever in the world of immortals. Do you reject 
 me?" 
 
 As she spoke, she knelt, and the whole character of her 
 face was changed, — nothing of sternness left to its grandeur; 
 a divine light, as that of an immortal, shining out from its 
 human beauty. But she rather awed me as angel than moved 
 me as woman, and after an embarrassed pause, I faltered 
 forth evasive expressions of gratitude, and sought, as deli- 
 cately as I could, to point out how humiliating would be my 
 position amongst her race in the light of a husband who 
 might never be permitted the name of father. 
 
 "But," said Zee, "this community does not constitute the 
 whole world. No; nor do all the populations comprised in 
 the league of the Vril-ya. For thy sake I will renounce my 
 
THE COMING RACE. 375 
 
 country and my people. We will fly together to some region 
 where thou shalt be safe. I am strong enough to bear thee 
 on my wings across the deserts that intervene. I am skilled 
 enough to cleave open, amid the rocks, valleys in which to 
 build our home. Solitude and a hut with thee would be to 
 me society and the universe. Or wouldst thou return to thine 
 own world, above the surface of this, exposed to the uncer- 
 tain seasons, and lit but by the changeful orbs which consti- 
 tute by thy description the fickle character of those savage 
 regions? If so, speak the word, and I will force the way for 
 thy return, so that I am thy companion there, though, there 
 as here, but partner of thy soul, and fellow-traveller with 
 thee to the world in which there is no parting and no death." 
 I could not but be deeply affected by the tenderness, at 
 once so pure and so impassioned, with which these words 
 were uttered, and in a voice that would have rendered musi- 
 cal the roughest sounds in the rudest tongue. And for a 
 moment it did occur to me that I might avail myself of Zee's 
 agency to affect a safe and speedy return to the upper world. 
 But a very brief space for reflection sufiiced to show me 
 how dishonourable and base a return for such devotion it 
 would be to allure thus away, from her own people and a 
 home in which I had been so hospitably' treated, a creature to 
 whom our world would be so abhorrent, and for whose barren, 
 if spiritual love, I could not reconcile myself to renounce the 
 more human affection of mates less exalted above my erring 
 self. With this sentiment of duty towards the Gy combined 
 another of duty towards the whole race I belonged to. Could 
 I venture to introduce into the upper world a being so for- 
 midably gifted, — a being that with a movement of her staff 
 could in less than an hour reduce New York and its glorious 
 Koom-Posh into a pinch of snuff? Eob her of one staff, with 
 her science she could easily construct another; and with the 
 deadly lightnings that armed the slender engine her whole 
 frame was charged. If thus dangerous to the cities and popu- 
 lations of the whole upper earth, could she be a safe com- 
 panion to myself in case her affection should be svibjected to 
 change or embittered by jealousy? These thoughts, which it 
 
376 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 takes so many words to express, passed rapidly through my 
 brain and decided my answer. 
 
 *'Zee," I said, in the softest tones I could command, and 
 pressing resjjectful lips on the hand into whose clasp mine 
 had vanished, — " Zee, I can find no words to say how deeply 
 I am touched, and how highly I am honoured, by a love so 
 disinterested and self-immolating. My best return to it is 
 perfect frankness. Each nation has its customs. The cus- 
 toms of yours do not allow you to wed me; the customs of 
 mine are equally opposed to such a union between those of 
 races so widely differing. On the other hand, though not de- 
 ficient in courage among my own people, or amid dangers with 
 which I am familiar, I cannot, without a shudder of horror, 
 think of constructing a bridal home in the heart of some dis- 
 mal chaos, with all the elements of nature, fire and water and 
 mephitic gases, at war with each other, and with the proba- 
 bility that at some moment, while you were busied in cleav- 
 ing rocks or conveying vril into lamps, I should be devoured 
 by a krek which your operations disturbed from its hiding- 
 place. I, a mere Tish, do not deserve the love of a Gy so 
 brilliant, so learned, so potent as yourself. Yes, I do not 
 deserve that love, for I cannot return it." 
 
 Zee released my hand, rose to her feet, and turned her face 
 away to hide her emotions ; then she glided noiselessly along 
 the room, and paused at the threshold. Suddenly, impelled 
 as by a new thought, she returned to my side and said, in a 
 whispered tone, — 
 
 "You told me you would speak with perfect frankness. 
 With perfect frankness, then, answer me this question. If 
 you cannot love me, do you love another? " 
 
 "Certainly I do not." 
 
 "You do not love Tae's sister? " 
 
 "I never saw her before last night." 
 
 "That is no answer. Love is swifter than vril. You hesi- 
 tate to tell me. Do not think it is only jealousy that prompts 
 me to caution you. If the Tur's daughter should declare love 
 to you, if in her ignorance she confides to her father any 
 preference that may justify his belief that she will woo you, 
 
THE COMING RACE. 377 
 
 he will have no option but to request your immediate destruc- 
 tion, as he is specially charged with the duty of consulting 
 the good of the community, which could not allow a daughter 
 of the Vril-ya to wed a son of the Tish-a, iu that sense of 
 marriage which does not confine itself to union of the souls. 
 Alas! there would then be for you no escape. She has no 
 strength of wing to uphold you through the air ; she has no 
 science wherewith to make a home in the wilderness. Be- 
 lieve that here my friendship speaks, and that my jealousy is 
 silent." 
 
 With those words Zee left me. And recalling those words, 
 I thought no more of succeeding to the throne of the Vril-ya, 
 or of the political, social, and moral reforms I should insti- 
 tute in the capacity of Absolute Sovereign. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Aftek the conversation with Zee just recorded, I fell into 
 a profound melancholy. The curious interest with which I 
 had hitherto examined the life and habits of this marvellous 
 community was at an end. I could not banish from my mind 
 the consciousness that I was among a people who, however 
 kind and courteous, could destroy me at any moment without 
 scruple or compunction. The virtuous and peaceful life of 
 the people which, while new to me, had seemed so holy a 
 contrast to the contentions, the passions, the vices of the 
 upper world, now began to oppress me with a sense of dulness 
 and monotony. Even the serene tranquillity of the lustrous 
 air preyed on ray spirits. I longed for a change, even to 
 winter, or storm, or darkness. I began to feel that, whatever 
 our dreams of perfectibility, our restless aspirations towards 
 a better and higher and calmer sphere of being, we, the mor- 
 tals of the upper world, are not trained or fitted to enjoy for 
 long the very happiness of which we dream or to which we 
 aspire. 
 
378 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 Now, in this social state of tlie Vril-ya, it was singular to 
 mark liow it contrived to unite and to harmonize into one 
 system nearly all the objects which the various philosophers 
 of the upper world have placed before human hopes as the 
 ideals of a Utopian future. It was a state in which war, with 
 all its calamities, was deemed impossible, — a state in which 
 the freedom of all and each was secured to the uttermost de- 
 gree, without one of those animosities which make freedom 
 in the upper world depend on the perpetual strife of hostile 
 parties. Here the corruption which debases democracies was 
 as unknown as the discontents which undermine the thrones 
 of monarchies. Equality here was not a name; it was a 
 reality. Riches were not persecuted, because they were not 
 envied. Here those problems connected with the labours of 
 a working class, hitherto insoluble above ground, and above 
 ground conducing to such bitterness between classes, were 
 solved by a process the simplest, — a distinct and separate 
 working class was dispensed with altogether. Mechanical 
 inventions, constructed on principles that baffled my research 
 to ascertain, worked by an agency infinitely more powerful 
 and infinitely more easy of management than aught we have 
 yet extracted from electricity or steam, with the aid of chil- 
 dren whose strength was never overtasked, but who loved their 
 employment as sport and pastime, sufficed to create a Public- 
 wealth so devoted to the general use that not a grumbler was 
 ever heard of. The vices that rot our cities here had no foot- 
 ing. Amusements abounded, but they were all innocent. No 
 merry-makings conduced to intoxication, to riot, to disease. 
 Love existed, and was ardent in pursuit, but its object, once 
 secured, was faithful. The adulterer, the profligate, the har- 
 lot, were phenomena so unknown in this commonwealth, that 
 even to find the words by whioh they were designated one 
 would have had to search throughout an obsolete literature 
 composed thousands of years before. They who have been 
 students of theoretical philosophies above ground, know that 
 all these strange departures from civilized life do but realize 
 ideas which have been broached, canvassed, ridiculed, con- 
 tested for; sometimes partially tried, and still put forth in 
 
THE COMING RACE. 379 
 
 fantastic books, but have never come to practical result. Xor 
 were these all the steps towards theoretical perfectibility 
 which this community had made. It had been the sober be- 
 lief of Descartes that the life of man could be prolonged, not, 
 indeed, on this earth, to eternal duration, but to what he 
 called the age of the patriarchs, and modestly defined to be 
 from one hundred to one hundred and fifty years average 
 length. Well, even this dream of sages was here fulfilled, — 
 nay, more than fulfilled; for the vigour of middle life was 
 preserved even after the term of a century was passed. With 
 this longevity was combined a greater blessing than itself, 
 that of continuous health. Such diseases as befell the race 
 were removed with ease by scientific applications of that 
 agency — life-giving as life-destroying — which is inherent 
 in vril. Even this idea is not unknown above ground, though 
 it has generally been confined to enthusiasts or charlatans, 
 and emanates from confused notions about mesmerism, odic 
 force, etc. Passing by such trivial contrivances as wings, 
 which every schoolboy knows has been tried and found want- 
 ing, from the mythical or prehistorical period, I proceed to 
 that very delicate question, urged of late as essential to the 
 perfect happiness of our human species by the two most 
 disturbing and potential influences on upper-ground society, 
 Womankind and Philosophy, — I mean, the Rights of Women. 
 Now, it is allowed by jurisprudists that it is idle to talk of 
 rights where there are not corresponding powers to enforce 
 them; and above ground, for some reason or other, man, in 
 his physical force, in the use of weapons offensive and defen- 
 sive, when it comes to positive personal contest, can, as a 
 rule of general application, master women. But among this 
 people there can be no doubt about the rights of women, be- 
 cause, as I have before said, the Gy, physically speaking, is 
 bigger and stronger than the An; and her will being also 
 more resolute than his, and will being essential to the 
 direction of the vril force, she can bring to bear upon him, 
 more potently than he on herself, the mystical agency which 
 art can extract from the occult properties of nature. There- 
 fore all that our female philosophers above ground contend 
 
380 THE COMIXG RACE. 
 
 for as to riglits of women, is conceded as a matter of course 
 in this happy commonwealth. Besides such physical powers, 
 the Gy-ei have (at least in youth) a keen desire for accom- 
 plishments and learning which exceeds that of the male ; and 
 thus they are the scholars, the professors, — the learned por- 
 tion, in short, of the community. 
 
 Of course, in this state of society the female establishes, 
 as I have shown, her most valued privilege, — that of choos- 
 ing and courting her wedding partner. "Without that privi- 
 lege she would despise all the others. Kow, above ground, 
 we should not unreasonably apprehend that a female, thus po- 
 tent and thus privileged, when she had fairly hunted us down 
 and married us, would be very imperious and tyrannical. 
 Not so with the Gy-ei: once married, the wings once sus- 
 pended, and more amiable, complacent, docile mates, more 
 sympathetic, more sinking their loftier capacities into the 
 study of their husband's comparatively frivolous tastes and 
 whims, no poet could conceive in his visions of conjugal 
 bliss. Lastly, among the more important characteristics of 
 the Yril-ya, as distinguished from our mankind, — lastly, and 
 most important on the bearings of their life and the peace of 
 their commonwealths, is their universal agreement in the ex- 
 istence of a merciful beneficent Deity, and of a future world 
 to the duration of which a century or two are moments too 
 brief to waste upon thoughts of fame and power and avarice; 
 while with that agreement is combined another, — namely, 
 since they can know nothing as to the nature of that Deity 
 beyond the fact of His supreme goodness, nor of that future 
 world beyond the fact of its felicitous existence, so their rea- 
 son forbids all angry disputes on insoluble questions. Thus 
 they secure for that State in the bowels of the earth what no 
 community ever secured under the light of the stars, — all 
 the blessings and consolations of a religion without any of 
 the evils and calamities which are engendered by strife be- 
 tween one religion and another. 
 
 It would be, then, utterly impossible to deny that the state 
 of existence among the Yril-ya is thus, as a whole, immeas- 
 urably more felicitous than that of super-terrestrial races, and, 
 
THE COMING RACE. 381 
 
 realizing the dreams of our most sanguine philanthropists, 
 almost approaches to a poet's conception of some angelical 
 order; and yet, if you would take a thousand of the best and 
 most philosophical of human beings you could find in London, 
 Paris, Berlin, New York, or even Boston, and place them as 
 citizens in this beatified community, my belief is, that in less 
 than a year they would either die of ennui, or attempt some 
 revolution by which they would militate against the good of 
 the communty, and be burned into cinders at the request of 
 the Tur. 
 
 Certainly I have no desire to insinuate, through the medium 
 of this narrative, any ignorant disparagement of the race to 
 which I belong. I have, on the contrary, endeavoured to 
 make it clear that the principles which regulate the social 
 system of the Vril-ya forbid them to produce those individual 
 examples of human greatness which adorn the annals of the 
 upper world. Where there are no wars there can be no Han- 
 nibal, no Washington, no Jackson, no Sheridan; where States 
 are so happy that they fear no danger and desire no change, 
 they cannot give birth to a Demosthenes, a Webster, a Sum- 
 ner, a Wendell Holmes, or a Butler; and where a society 
 attains to a moral standard, in which there are no crimes and 
 no sorrows from which tragedy can extract its aliment of pity 
 and sorrow, no salient vices or follies on which comedy can 
 lavish its mirthful satire, it has lost the chance of producing 
 a Shakspeare, or a Moliere, or a Mrs. Beeche r Stowe. But if 
 I- have no desire to disparage my fellow-men above ground in 
 showing how much the motives that impel the energies and 
 ambition of individuals in a society of contest and struggle, 
 become dormant or annulled in a society which aims at secur- 
 ing for the aggregate the calm and innocent felicity Avhich we 
 presume to be tlie lot of beatified immortals, neither, on the 
 other hand, have I the wish to represent the commonwealths 
 of the Vriliya as^n ideal form of political society, to the at- 
 tainment of which our own efforts of reform should be di- 
 rected. On the contrary, it is because we have so combined, 
 throughout the series of ages, the elements which compose 
 human character, that it would be utterly impossible for us 
 
382 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 to adopt the modes of life, or to reconcile our passions to the 
 modes of thought, among the Vril-ya, — that I arrived at the 
 conviction that this people — though originally not only of 
 our human race, but, as seems to me clear by the roots of 
 their language, descended from the same ancestors as the 
 great Aryan family, from which in varied streams has flowed 
 the dominant civilization of the world; and having, according 
 to their myths and their history, passed through phases of 
 society familiar to ourselves — had yet now developed into a 
 distinct species, with which it was impossible that any com- 
 munity in the upper world could amalgamate; and that if 
 they ever emerged from these nether recesses into the light 
 of day, they would, according to their own traditional persua- 
 sions of their ultimate destiny, destroy and replace our exist- 
 ent varieties of man. 
 
 It may indeed be said, since more than one Gy could be 
 foiind to conceive a partiality for so ordinary a type of our 
 super-terrestrial race as myself, that even if the Vril-ya did 
 appear above ground, we might be saved from extermination 
 by intermixture of race. But this is too sanguine a belief. 
 Instances of such mesalliance would be as rare as those of in- 
 termarriage between the Anglo-Saxon emigrants and the Eed 
 Indians. Nor would time be allowed for the operation of 
 familiar intercourse. The Vril-ya, on emerging, induced by 
 the charm of a sunlit heaven to form their settlements above 
 ground, would commence at once the work of destruction, 
 seize upon the territories already cultivated, and clear off, 
 without scruple, all the inhabitants who resisted that inva- 
 sion. And considering their contempt for the institutions of 
 Koom-Posh, or Popular Government, and the pugnacious 
 valour of my beloved countrymen, I believe that if the Vril-ya 
 first appeared in free America — as, being the choicest por- 
 tion of the habitable earth, they would doubtless be induced 
 to do — and said, " This quarter of the globe we take ; Citi- 
 zens of a Koom-Posh, make way for the development of 
 species in the Vril-ya," my brave compatriots would show 
 fight, and not a soul of them would be left in this life to rally 
 round the Stars and Stripes at the end of a week. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 383 
 
 I now saw but little of Zee, save at meals, when the family- 
 assembled, and she was then reserved and silent. My appre- 
 hensions of danger from an affection I had so little encour- 
 aged or deserved, therefore, now faded away, but my dejection 
 continued to increase. I pined for escape to the upper Avorld, 
 but I racked my brains in vain for any means to effect it. I 
 was never permitted to wander forth alone, so that I could 
 not even visit the spot on which I had alighted, and see if it 
 Avere possible to reascend to the mine. Nor even in the Silent 
 Hours, when the household was locked in sleep, could I have 
 let myself down from the lofty floor in which my apartment 
 was placed. I knew not how to command the automata who 
 stood mockingly at my beck beside the wall, nor could I ascer- 
 tain the springs by which were set in movement the platforms 
 that supplied the place of stairs. The knowledge how to 
 avail myself of these contrivances had been purposely withheld 
 from me. Oh, that I could but have learned the use of wings, 
 so freely here at the service of every infant! then I might 
 have escaped from the casement, regained the rocks, and 
 buoyed myself aloft through the chasm of which the perpen- 
 dicular sides forbade place for human footing! 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 One day, as I sat alone and brooding in my chamber, Tae 
 flew in at the open window and alighted on the couch beside 
 me. I was always pleased with the visits of a child in 
 whose society, if humbled, I was less eclipsed than in that of 
 Ana who had completed their education and matured their 
 understanding; and as I was permitted to wander forth with 
 him for my companion, and as I longed to revisit the spot in 
 which I had descended into the nether world, I hastened to 
 ask him if he were at leisure for a stroll beyond the streets 
 of the city. His countenance seemed to me graver than usual 
 as he replied, "I came hither on purpose to invite you forth." 
 
384 THE CO]\nNG RACE. 
 
 We soon found ourselves in the street, and I liad not got 
 far from the house when we encountered five or six young 
 Gy-ei, who were returning from the fields with baskets full 
 of flowers, and chanting a song in chorus as they walked. A 
 young Gy sings more often than she talks. They stopped on 
 seeing us, accosting Tae with familiar kindness, and me with 
 the courteous gallantry which distinguishes the Gy-ei in their 
 manner towards our weaker sex. 
 
 And here I may observe that, though a virgin Gy is so 
 frank in her courtship to the individual she favours, there is 
 nothing that approaches to that general breadth and loudness 
 of manner which those young ladies of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
 to whom the distinguished epithet of " fast " is accorded, ex- 
 hibit towards young gentlemen whom they do not profess to 
 love. jSTo : the bearing of the Gy-ei towards males in ordi- 
 nary is very much that of high-bred men in the gallant soci- 
 eties of the upper world towards ladies whom they respect 
 but do not woo ; deferential, complimentary, exquisitely pol- 
 ished, — what we should call "chivalrous." 
 
 Certainly I was a little put out by the number of civil 
 things addressed to my amour propre, which were said to me 
 by these courteous young Gy-ei. In the world I came from, 
 a man would have thought himself aggrieved, treated with 
 irony, " chaffed " (if so vulgar a slang word may be allowed 
 on the authority of the popular novelists who use it so freely), 
 when one fair Gy complimented me on the freshness of my 
 complexion, another on the choice of colours in my dress, a 
 third, with a sly smile, on the conquests I had made at Aph- 
 Lin's entertainment. But I knew already that all such lan- 
 guage was what the French call banal, and did but express in 
 the female mouth, below earth, that sort of desire to pass for 
 amiable with the opposite sex which, above earth, arbitrary 
 custom and hereditary transmission demonstrate by the mouth 
 of the male. And just as a high-bred young lady, above 
 earth, habituated to such compliments, feels that she cannot, 
 without impropriety, return them, nor evince any great satis- 
 faction at receiving them, so I, who had learned polite man- 
 ners at the house of so wealthy and dignified a Minister of 
 
THE COiMING RACE. 385 
 
 that nation, could but smile and try to look pretty in bash- 
 fully disclaiming the compliments showered upon me. While 
 we were thus talking, Taii's sister, it seems, had seen us from 
 the upper rooms of the Royal Palace at the entrance of the 
 town, and, precipitating herself on her wings, alighted in the 
 midst of the group. 
 
 Singling me out, she said, though still with the inimitable 
 deference of manner which I have called "chivalrous," yet 
 not without a certain abruptness of tone which, as addressed 
 to the weaker sex. Sir Philip Sidney might have termed 
 "rustic," "Why do you never come to see us? " 
 
 While I was deliberating on the right answer to give to 
 this unlooked-for question, Tae said quickly and sternly, 
 "Sister, you forget, — the stranger is of my sex. It is not 
 for persons of my sex, having due regard for reputation and 
 modesty, to lower themselves by running after the society of 
 yours." 
 
 This speech was received with evident approval by the 
 young Gy-ei in general; but Tae's sister looked greatly 
 abashed. Poor thing! — and a Princess too! 
 
 Just at this moment a shadow fell on the space between me 
 and the group; and, turning round, I beheld the chief magis- 
 trate coming close upon us, with the silent and stately pace 
 peculiar to the Vril-ya. At the sight of his countenance, the 
 same terror which had seized me when I first beheld it re- 
 turned. On that brow, in those eyes, there was that same in- 
 definable something which marked the being of a race fatal 
 to our own, — that strange expression of serene exemption 
 from our common cares and passions, of conscious superior 
 power, compassionate and inflexible as that of a judge who 
 pronounces doom. I shivered, and, inclining low, pressed 
 the arm of my child-friend, and drew him onward silently. 
 The Tur placed himself before our path, regarded me for a 
 moment without speaking, then turned his e3'e quietly on his 
 daughter's face, and, with a grave salutation to her and the 
 other Gy-ei, went through the midst of the group, — still 
 without a word. 
 
 25 
 
386 THE COaUNG RACE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXYIII. 
 
 "When Tae and I found ourselves alone on tlie broad road 
 that lay between the city and the chasm through which I had 
 descended into this region beneath the light of the stars and 
 sun, I said under my breath, "Child and friend, there is a 
 look in your father's face which appalls me. I feel as if, in 
 its awful tranquillity, I gazed upon death." 
 
 Tae did not immediately reply. He seemed agitated, and 
 as if debating with himself by what words to soften some un- 
 welcome intelligence. At last he said, "Xone of the Vril-ya 
 fear death: do you? " 
 
 " The dread of death is implanted in the breasts of the race 
 to which I belong. We can conquer it at the call of duty, of 
 honour, of love. "We can die for a truth, for a native land, 
 for those who are dearer to us than ourselves. But if death 
 do really threaten me now and here, where are such counter- 
 actions to the natural instinct which invests with awe and 
 terror the contemplation of severance between soul and 
 body?" 
 
 Tae looked surprised, but there was great tenderness in his 
 voice as he replied, " I will tell my father what you say. I 
 will entreat him to spare your life." 
 
 "He has, then, already decreed to destroy it? " 
 
 " 'T is my sister's fault or folly," said Tae, with some petu- 
 lance. "But she spoke this morning to my father; and, after 
 she had spoken, he summoned me, as a chief among the chil- 
 dren who are commissioned to destroy such lives as threaten 
 the community, and he said to me, 'Take thy vril staff, and 
 seek the stranger who has made himself dear to thee. Be his 
 end painless and prompt.' " 
 
 "And," I faltered, recoiling from the child, "and it is, 
 then, for my murder that thus treacherously thou hast invited 
 me forth? No, I cannot believe it. I cannot think thee 
 guilty of such a crime." 
 
THE COMING RACE. 387 
 
 "It is no crime to slay those who threaten the good of the 
 community; it would be a crime to slay the smallest insect 
 that cannot harm us." 
 
 " If you mean that I threaten the good of the community 
 because your sister honours me with the sort of preference 
 which a child may feel for a strange plaything, it is not ne- 
 cessary to kill me. Let me return to the people I have left, 
 and by the chasm through which I descended. Witli a slight 
 help from you, I might do so now. You, by the aid of your 
 wings, could fasten to the rocky ledge within the chasm the 
 cord that you found, and have no doi-bt preserved. Do but 
 that; assist me but to the spot from which I alighted, and I 
 vanish from your world forever, and as surely as if I were 
 among the dead." 
 
 "The chasm through which you descended! Look round; 
 we stand now on the very place where it yawned. What see 
 you? Only solid rock. The chasm was closed, by the orders 
 of Aph-Lin, as soon as communication between him and your- 
 self was established in your trance, and he learned from your 
 own lips the nature of the world from which you came. Do 
 you not remember when Zee bade me not question you as 
 to yourself or your race? On quitting you that day, Aph-Lin 
 accosted me, and said, 'No path between the stranger's home 
 and ours should be left unclosed, or the sorrow and evil of 
 his home may descend to ours. Take with thee the children 
 of thy band, smite the sides of the cavern with your vril 
 staves till the fall of their fragments fills up every chink 
 through which a gleam of our lamps could force its way.' " 
 
 As the child spoke, I stared aghast at the blind rocks be- 
 fore me. Huge and irregular, the granite masses, showing 
 by charred discolouration where they had been shattered, rose 
 from footing to roof-top ; not a cranny ! 
 
 "All hope, then, is gone," I murmured, sinking down on 
 the craggy wayside, "and I shall nevermore see the sun." I 
 covered my face with my hands, and prayed to Him whose 
 presence I had so often forgotten when the heavens had de- 
 clared His handiwork. I felt His presence in the depths of 
 the nether earth, and amid the world of the grave. I looked 
 
388 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 up, taking comfort and courage from my prayers, and gazing 
 ■vvitli a quiet smile into the face of the child, said, "Now, if 
 thou must slay me, strike." 
 
 Tae shook his head gently. "Nay," he said, "my father's 
 request is not so formally made as to leave me no choice. I 
 will speak with him, and I may prevail to save thee. Strange 
 that thou shouldst have that fear of death which we thought 
 was only the instinct of the inferior creatures, to whom the 
 conviction of another life has not been vouchsafed. AVith us, 
 not an infant knows such a fear. Tell me, my dear Tish," 
 he continued, after a little pause, "would it reconcile thee 
 more to departure from this form of life to that form which 
 lies on the other side of the moment called 'death,' did I 
 share thy journey? If so, I will ask my father whether it be 
 allowable for me to go with thee. I am one of our generation 
 destined to emigrate, when of age for it, to some regions un- 
 known within this world. I would just as soon emigrate now 
 to regions unknown in another world. The All-Good is no 
 less there than here. Where is He not? " 
 
 "Child," said I, seeing by Tae's countenance that he spoke 
 in serious earnest, " it is crime in thee to slay me ; it were a 
 crime not less in me to say, 'Slay thyself.' The All-Good 
 chooses His own time to give us life, and His own time to 
 take it away. Let us go back. If, on speaking with thy 
 father, he decides on my death, give me the longest warn- 
 ing in thy power, so that I may pass the interval in self- 
 preparation." 
 
 We walked back to the city, conversing but by fits and 
 starts. We could not understand each other's reasonings, 
 and I felt for the fair child, with his soft voice and beautiful 
 face, much as a convict feels for the executioner who walks 
 beside him to the place of doom. 
 
THE COMING RACE. 389 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Ix tlie midst of tliose hours set apart for sleep, aud consti- 
 tuting the night of the Vril-ya, I was awakened from the dis- 
 turbed slumber into which I had not long fallen, by a hand 
 on my shoulder. I started, and beheld Zee standing be- 
 side me. 
 
 "Hush," she said, in a whisper; "let no one hear us. Dost 
 thou think that I have ceased to watch over thy safety be- 
 cause I could not win thy love? I have seen Tae. He has 
 not prevailed with his father, who had meanwhile conferred 
 with the three sages whom, in doubtful matters, he takes into 
 council, and by their advice he has ordained thee to perish 
 when the world re-awakens to life. I will save thee. Ilise 
 and dress." 
 
 Zee pointed to a table by the couch, on which I saw the 
 clothes I had worn on quitting the upper world, and which I 
 had exchanged subsequently for the more picturesque gar- 
 ments of the Yril-ya. The young Gy then moved towards 
 the casement, and stepped into the balcony while hastily and 
 wonderingly I donned my own habiliments. When I joined 
 her on the balcony, her face was pale and rigid. Taking me 
 by the hand, she said softly, "See how brightly the art of 
 the Vril-ya has lighted up the world in which they dwell. 
 To-morrow that world will be dark to me." She drew me 
 back into the room without waiting for my answer, thence 
 into the corridor, from which we descended into the hall. 
 We passed into the deserted streets and along the broad up- 
 ward road which wound beneath the rocks. Here, where 
 there is neither day nor night, the Silent Hours are unutter- 
 ably solemn, — the vast space illumined by mortal skill is so 
 wholly without the sight and stir of mortal life. Soft as were 
 our footsteps, their sounds vexed the ear, as out of harmony 
 with the universal repose. I was aware in my own mind, 
 
390 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 thougli Zee said it not, tliat site had decided to assist my re- 
 turn to the upper world, and that we were bound towards the 
 place from which I had descended. Her silence infected me, 
 and commanded mine. And now we approached the chasm. 
 It had been reopened; not presenting, indeed, the same aspect 
 as when I had emerged from it, but through that closed wall 
 of rock before which I had last stood with Tae, a new cleft 
 had been riven, and along its blackened sides still glimmered 
 sparks and smouldered embers. My upward gaze could not, 
 however, penetrate more than a few feet into the darkness of 
 the hollow void, and I stood dismayed, and wondering how 
 that grim ascent was to be made. 
 
 Zee divined my doubt. "Fear not," said she, with a faint 
 smile; "your return is assured. I began this Avork when the 
 Silent Hours commenced, and all else were asleep; believe 
 that I did not pause till the path back into thy world was 
 clear. I shall be with thee a little while yet. We do not 
 part until thou sayest, ' Go, for I need thee no more. ' " 
 
 My heart smote me with remorse at these words. "Ah," I 
 exclaimed, " would that thou wert of ray race or I of thine, 
 then I should never say, 'I need thee no more.'" 
 
 " I bless thee for those words, and I shall remember them 
 when thou art gone," answered the Gy, tenderly. 
 
 During this brief interchange of words. Zee had turned 
 away from me, her form bent and her head bowed over her 
 breast. Now, she rose to the full height of her grand stature, 
 and stood fronting me. While she had been thus averted 
 from my gaze, she had lighted up the circlet that she wore 
 round her brow, so that it blazed as if it were a crown of 
 stars. Not only her face and her form, but the atmosphere 
 around, were illumined by the effulgence of the diadem. 
 
 "Now," said she, "put thine arms around me for the first 
 and last time. Nay, thus; courage, and cling firm." 
 
 As she spoke her form dilated, the vast wings expanded. 
 Clinging to her, I was borne aloft through the terrible chasm. 
 The starry light from her forehead shot around and before us 
 through the darkness. Brightly and steadfastly and swiftly 
 as an angel may soar heavenward with the soul it rescues 
 
THE COMING RACE. 391 
 
 from the grave, went the flight of the Gy, till I hoard in the 
 distance the hum of human voices, the sounds of human toil. 
 We halted on the flooring of one of the galleries of the mine, 
 and beyond, in the vista, burned the dim, rare, feeble lamps 
 of the miners. Then I released my hold. The Gy kissed me 
 on my forehead passionately, but as with a mother's passion, 
 and said, as the tears gushed from her eyes, "Farewell for- 
 ever! Thou wilt not let me go into thy world, — thou canst 
 never return to mine. Ere our household shake off slumber, 
 the rocks will have again closed over the chasm, not to be re- 
 opened by me, nor perhaps by others, for ages yet unguessed. 
 Think of me sometimes, and with kindness. When I reach 
 the life that lies beyond this speck in time, I shall look round 
 for thee. Even there, the world consigned to thyself and thy 
 people may have rocks and gulfs which divide it from that in 
 which I rejoin those of my race that have gone before, and I 
 may be powerless to cleave way to regain thee as I have 
 cloven way to lose." 
 
 Her voice ceased. I heard the swan-like sough of her 
 wings, and saw the rays of her starry diadem receding far 
 and farther through the gloom. 
 
 I sat myself down for some time, musing sorrowfully; then 
 I rose and took my way with slow footsteps towards the place 
 in which I heard the sounds of men. The miners I encoun- 
 tered were strange to me, of another nation than my own. 
 They turned to look at me with some surprise, but finding 
 that I could not answer their brief questions in their own 
 language, they returned to their work and suffered me to pass 
 on unmolested. In fine, I regained the mouth of the mine, 
 little troubled by other interrogatories, — save those of a 
 friendly official to whom I was knoAvn, and luckily he was 
 too busy to talk much with me. I took cai-e not to return to 
 my former lodging, but hastened that very day to quit a 
 neighbourhood where I could not long have escaped inquiries 
 to which I could have given no satisfactory answers. I re- 
 gained in safety my own country, in which I have been long 
 peacefully settled, and engaged in practical business, till I 
 retired, on a competent fortune, three years ago. I have been 
 
392 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 little invited and little tempted to talk of the rovings and ad- 
 ventures of my youth. Somewhat disappointed, as most men 
 are, in matters connected with household love and domestic 
 life, I often think of the young Gy as I sit alone at night, 
 and wonder how I could have rejected such a love, no matter 
 what dangers attended it, or by what conditions it was re- 
 stricted. Only, the more I think of a people calmly de- 
 veloping, in regions excluded from our sight and deemed 
 uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our most dis- 
 ciplined modes of force, and virtues to which our life, social 
 and political, becomes antagonistic in proportion as our civil- 
 ization advances, the more devoutly I pray that ages may yet 
 elapse before there emerge into sunlight our inevitable de- 
 stroyers. Being, however, frankly told by my ph^^sician that 
 I am aiflicted by a complaint which, though it gives little 
 pain and no perceptible notice of its encroachments, may at 
 any moment be fatal, I have thought it my duty to my fellow- 
 men to place on record these forewarnings of The Coming 
 Kace. 
 
 THE END. 
 
CT- 
 
 RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 TO-^ 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 - HOME USE 
 
 2 : 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 ( 
 
 b 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. 
 
 Books may be Renewed by calling 642-3405 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 
 
 
 JUL 2 81995 
 
 , i 
 
 
 AUTO DISC CIRC JUL 
 
 >9'94 
 
 
 AUG 2 1 1997 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 FORM NO. DD6 BERKELEY, CA 94720 ^^ 
 
U.C, BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 CD3STlllfiS