outy, and then, from being swollen and gouty, dwindled down to
bare bone-shanks; the roses left their cheeks, and then their cheeks
disappeared, and left their skulls, and then their skulls powdered into
dust, and all sign of them was gone. And as it was with them, so shall
it be with us. Ho, seneschal! fill me a cup of liquor! put sugar in it,
good fellow--yea, and a little hot water; a very little, for my soul is
sad, as I think of those days and knights of old.

They, too, have revelled and feasted, and where are they?--gone?--nay,
not altogether gone; for doth not the eye catch glimpses of them as they
walk yonder in the gray limbo of romance, shining faintly in their coats
of steel, wandering by the side of long-haired ladies, with long-tailed
gowns that little pages carry? Yes! one sees them: the poet sees them
still in the far-off Cloudland, and hears the ring of their clarions
as they hasten to battle or tourney--and the dim echoes of their lutes
chanting of love and fair ladies! Gracious privilege of poesy! It is as
the Dervish's collyrium to the eyes, and causes them to see treasures
that to the sight of donkeys are invisible. Blessed treasures of fancy!
I would not change ye--no, not for many donkey-loads of gold. . . . Fill
again, jolly seneschal, thou brave wag; chalk me up the produce on the
hostel door--surely the spirits of old are mixed up in the wondrous
liquor, and gentle visions of bygone princes and princesses look blandly
down on us from the cloudy perfume of the pipe. Do you know in what
year the fairies left the Rhine?--long before Murray's "Guide-Book"
was wrote--long before squat steamboats, with snorting funnels, came
paddling down the stream. Do you not know that once upon a time the
appearance of eleven thousand British virgins was considered at Cologne
as a wonder? Now there come twenty thousand such annually, accompanied
by their ladies'-maids. But of them we will say no more--let us back to
those who went before them.

Many, many hundred thousand years ago, and at the exact period when
chivalry was in full bloom, there occurred a little history upon the
banks of the Rhine, which has been already written in a book, and hence
must be positively true. 'Tis a story of knights and ladies--of love
and battle, and virtue rewarded; a story of princes and noble lords,
moreover: the best of company. Gentles, an ye will, ye shall hear it.
Fair dames and damsels, may your loves be as happy as those o