ends,
who had paused on the opposite shore during the heats of noon, and, over
wine and fruits, had mimicked the groups of Boccaccio, and intermingled
the lute, the jest, the momentary love, and the laughing tale.

What a difference now in his thoughts, in the object of the voyage, in
his present companions! The feet of years fall noiseless; we heed, we
note them not, till tracking the same course we passed long since,
we are startled to find how deep the impression they leave behind.
To revisit the scenes of our youth is to commune with the ghost of
ourselves.

At this time the clouds gathered rapidly along the heavens, and they
were startled by the first peal of the thunder. Sudden and swift came on
the storm, and Trevylyan trembled as he covered Gertrude's form with the
rude boat-cloaks they had brought with them; the small vessel began to
rock wildly to and fro upon the waters. High above them rose the
vast dismantled ruins of Rheinfels, the lightning darting through its
shattered casements and broken arches, and brightening the gloomy trees
that here and there clothed the rocks, and tossed to the angry wind.
Swift wheeled the water-birds over the river, dipping their plumage in
the white foam, and uttering their discordant screams. A storm upon the
Rhine has a grandeur it is in vain to paint. Its rocks, its foliage, the
feudal ruins that everywhere rise from the lofty heights, speaking
in characters of stern decay of many a former battle against time
and tempest; the broad and rapid course of the legendary river,--all
harmonize with the elementary strife; and you feel that to see the Rhine
only in the sunshine is to be unconscious of its most majestic aspects.
What baronial war had those ruins witnessed! From the rapine of the
lordly tyrant of those battlements rose the first Confederation of the
Rhine,--the great strife between the new time and the old, the town
and the castle, the citizen and the chief. Gray and stern those ruins
breasted the storm,--a type of the antique opinion which once manned
them with armed serfs; and, yet in ruins and decay, appeals from the
victorious freedom it may no longer resist!

Clasped in Trevylyan's guardian arms, and her head pillowed on his
breast, Gertrude felt nothing of the storm save its grandeur; and
Trevylyan's voice whispered cheer and courage to her ear. She answered
by a smile and a sigh, but not of pain. In the convulsions of nature we
forget our own separate existe