The Pilgrims of the Rhine
Page 53
CHAPTER XXIV. THE BROTHERS.
THE banks of the Rhine now shelved away into sweeping plains, and ontheir right rose the once imperial city of Boppart. In no journeyof similar length do you meet with such striking instances of themutability and shifts of power. To find, as in the Memphian Egypt, acity sunk into a heap of desolate ruins; the hum, the roar, the mart ofnations, hushed into the silence of ancestral tombs, is less humblingto our human vanity than to mark, as along the Rhine, the kingly citydwindled into the humble town or the dreary village,--decay without itsgrandeur, change without the awe of its solitude! On the site onwhich Drusus raised his Roman tower, and the kings of the Franks theirpalaces, trade now dribbles in tobacco-pipes, and transforms into anexcellent cotton factory the antique nunnery of Konigsberg! So be it; itis the progressive order of things,--the world itself will soon be oneexcellent cotton factory!
"Look," said Trevylyan, as they sailed on, "at yonder mountain, with itstwo traditionary Castles of Liebenstein and Sternfels."
Massive and huge the ruins swelled above the green rock, at the footof which lay, in happier security from time and change, the clusteredcottages of the peasant, with a single spire rising above the quietvillage.
"Is there not, Albert, a celebrated legend attached to those castles?"said Gertrude. "I think I remember to have heard their names inconnection with your profession of taleteller."
"Yes," said Trevylyan, "the story relates to the last lords of thoseshattered towers, and--"
"You will sit here, nearer to me, and begin," interrupted Gertrude, inher tone of childlike command. "Come."