alley; 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 Roman arms. The soldier was paying a momentary court to
a country 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 Imperial 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 existence! If home has its comforts, it also
has its cares; but here we are at home with Nature, and the minor evils
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 variety itself. As the eye aches in
gazing long at the new shapes of 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 Vane, "has two
faults,--we are too subtle and too home