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 Rhine 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 opposite shore they saw the
mighty rock of Hammerstein, with the green and livid ruins sleeping
in the melancholy moonlight. Two towers rose haughtily above the more
dismantled 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?"

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 we
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