of things; and though the bark might sail on as
swiftly, and the stream swell with as proud a wave, a something that
had vibrated on the heart was still, and the magic of the voyage was no
more.

And Gertrude sleeps on the spot where she wished her last couch to be
made; and far--oh, far dearer, is that small spot on the distant banks
of the gliding Neckar to Trevylyan's heart than all the broad lands
and fertile fields of his ancestral domain. The turf too preserves its
emerald greenness; and it would seem to me that the field flowers spring
up by the sides of the simple tomb even more profusely than of old.
A curve in the bank breaks the tide of the Neckar; and therefore its
stream pauses, as if to linger reluctantly, by that solitary grave, and
to mourn among the rustling sedges ere it passes on. And I have thought,
when I last looked upon that quiet place, when I saw the turf so fresh,
and the flowers so bright of hue, that aerial hands might _indeed_
tend the sod; that it was by no _imaginary_ spells that I summoned
the fairies to my tale; that in truth, and with vigils constant though
unseen, they yet kept from all polluting footsteps, and from the harsher
influence of the seasons, the grave of one who so loved their race;
and who, in her gentle and spotless virtue claimed kindred with the
beautiful Ideal of the world. Is there one of us who has not known some
being for whom it seemed not too wild a fantasy to indulge such dreams?

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Pilgrims Of The Rhine, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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