THE banks of the Rhine now shelved away into sweeping plains, and on their right rose the once imperial city of Boppart. In no journey of similar length do you meet with such striking instances of the mutability and shifts of power. To find, as in the Memphian Egypt, a city sunk into a heap of desolate ruins; the hum, the roar, the mart of nations, hushed into the silence of ancestral tombs, is less humbling to our human vanity than to mark, as along the Rhine, the kingly city dwindled into the humble town or the dreary village,--decay without its grandeur, change without the awe of its solitude! On the site on which Drusus raised his Roman tower, and the kings of the Franks their palaces, trade now dribbles in tobacco-pipes, and transforms into an excellent cotton factory the antique nunnery of Konigsberg! So be it; it is the progressive order of things,--the world itself will soon be one excellent cotton factory! “Look,” said Trevylyan, as they sailed on, “at yonder mountain, with its two traditionary Castles of Liebenstein and Sternfels.” Massive and huge the ruins swelled above the green rock, at the foot of which lay, in happier security from time and change, the clustered cottages of the peasant, with a single spire rising above the quiet village. “Is there not, Albert, a celebrated legend attached to those castles?” said Gertrude. “I think I remember to have heard their names in connection with your profession of taleteller.” “Yes,” said Trevylyan, “the story relates to the last lords of those shattered towers, and--” “You will sit here, nearer to me, and begin,” interrupted Gertrude, in her tone of childlike command. “Come.” THE BROTHERS. A TALE.* * This tale is, in reality, founded on the beautiful tradition which belongs to Liebenstein and Sternfels. You must imagine then, dear Gertrude (said Trevylyan), a beautiful summer day, and by the same faculty that none possess so richly as yourself, for it is you who can kindle something of that divine spark even in me, you must rebuild those shattered towers in the pomp of old; raise the gallery and the hall; man the battlements with warders, and give the proud banners of ancestral chivalry to wave upon the walls. But above, sloping half down the rock, you must fancy the hanging gardens of Liebenstein, fragrant with flowers, and basking in the noonday sun. On the greenest turf, underneath an oak, there sat three persons, in the bloom of youth. Two of the three were brothers; the third was an orphan girl, whom the lord of the opposite tower of Sternfels had bequeathed to the protection of his brother, the chief of Liebenstein. The castle itself and the demesne that belonged to it passed away from the female line, and became the heritage of Otho, the orphan’s cousin, and the younger of the two brothers now seated on the turf.