ory of a fallen
empire in all its epochs.

"There is one singular habitant of these ruins," said the student,--"a
solitary painter, who has dwelt here some twenty years, companioned only
by his Art. No other apartment but that which he tenants is occupied by
a human being."

"What a poetical existence!" cried Gertrude, enchanted with a solitude
so full of associations.

"Perhaps so," said the cruel Vane, ever anxious to dispel an illusion,
"but more probably custom has deadened to him all that overpowers
ourselves with awe; and he may tread among these ruins rather seeking to
pick up some rude morsel of antiquity, than feeding his imagination with
the dim traditions that invest them with so august a poetry."

"Monsieur's conjecture has something of the truth in it," said the
German; "but then the painter is a Frenchman."

There is a sense of fatality in the singular mournfulness and majesty
which belong to the ruins of Heidelberg, contrasting the vastness of the
strength with the utterness of the ruin. It has been twice struck with
lightning, and is the wreck of the elements, not of man; during the
great siege it sustained, the lightning is supposed to have struck the
powder magazine by accident.

What a scene for some great imaginative work! What a mocking
interference of the wrath of nature in the puny contests of men! One
stroke of "the red right arm" above us, crushing the triumph of ages,
and laughing to scorn the power of the beleaguers and the valour of the
besieged!

They passed the whole day among these stupendous ruins, and felt, when
they descended to their inn, as if they had left the caverns of some
mighty tomb.

CHAPTER XXX. NO PART OF THE EARTH REALLY SOLITARY.--THE SONG OF THE
FAIRIES.--THE SACRED SPOT.--THE WITCH OF THE EVIL WINDS.--THE SPELL AND
THE DUTY OF THE FAIRIES.

BUT in what spot of the world is there ever utter solitude? The vanity
of man supposes that loneliness is _his_ absence! Who shall say what
millions of spiritual beings glide invisibly among scenes apparently the
most deserted? Or what know we of our own mechanism, that we should deny
the possibility of life and motion to things that we cannot ourselves
recognize?

At moonlight, in the Great Court of Heidelberg, on the borders of the
shattered basin overgrown with weeds, the following song was heard by
the melancholy shades that roam at night through the mouldering halls of
old, and the gloomy hollows in the mountain