e steep ruins that overshadow
the water, untouched by one lesson from the pensive morality of Time.
Everywhere around us is the evidence of perished opinions and
departed races; everywhere around us, also, the rejoicing fertility of
unconquerable Nature, and the calm progress of Man himself through the
infinite cycles of decay. He who would judge adequately of a landscape
must regard it not only with the painter's eye, but with the poet's.
The feelings which the sight of any scene in Nature conveys to the
mind--more especially of any scene on which history or fiction has left
its trace--must depend upon our sympathy with those associations which
make up what may be called the spiritual character of the spot. If
indifferent to those associations, we should see only hedgerows and
ploughed land in the battle-field of Bannockburn; and the traveller
would but look on a dreary waste, whether he stood amidst the piles of
the Druid on Salisbury plain, or trod his bewildered way over the broad
expanse on which the Chaldaean first learned to number the stars.

To the former editions of this tale was prefixed a poem on "The Ideal,"
which had all the worst faults of the author's earliest compositions
in verse. The present poem (with the exception of a very few lines) has
been entirely rewritten, and has at least the comparative merit of being
less vague in the thought, and less unpolished in the diction, than that
which it replaces.

CONTENTS.

THE IDEAL WORLD

THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE

CHAPTER I.
In which the Reader is Introduced to Queen Nymphalin

CHAPTER II.
The Lovers

CHAPTER III.
Feelings

CHAPTER IV.
The Maid of Malines

CHAPTER V.
Rotterdam.--The Character of the Dutch.--Their Resemblance to the
Germans.--A Dispute between Vane and Trevylyan, after the manner of the
ancient Novelists, as to which is preferable, the Life of Action, or the
Life of Repose.--Trevylyan's Contrast between Literary Ambition and the
Ambition of Public Life

CHAPTER VI.
Gorcum.--The Tour of the Virtues: a Philosopher's Tale

CHAPTER VII.
Cologne.--The Traces of the Roman Yoke.--The Church of St.
Maria.--Trevylyan's Reflections on the Monastic Life.--The Tomb of the
Three Kings.--An Evening Excursion on the Rhine

CHAPTER VIII.
The Soul in Purgatory; or, Love Stronger than Death

CHAPTER IX.
The Scenery of the Rhine analogous to the German Literary Genius.--The