ed 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 night.

He spoke no more, but hurried within the house; and when the gray light
of morn broke upon his gloomy features, haggard 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 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.

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 ethereal tribes. Chief of these, sweet
Dreamer of the "Midsummer 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,
O 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 without 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 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 passing 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, a