y 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 have a strange privilege in
hallowing the very spot which they devastate.

Below, in green curves and mimic bays covered with herbage, 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 verdure: the
eye turned from them, as from the sad moral that belongs to existence.

In proceeding to Trarbach, Gertrude was seized with another 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
journey, if Gertrude had not exerted herself to dispel the impression
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 before 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 prepossessing aspect. Right 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,