“But,” added Trevylyan, a moment afterwards, “the Ideal is passing slowly away from the German mind; a spirit for the more active and the more material literature is springing up amongst them. The revolution of mind gathers on, preceding stormy events; and the memories that led their grandsires to contemplate will urge the youth of the next generation to dare and to act.” * * Is not this prediction already fulfilled?--1849. Thus conversing, they continued their voyage, with a fair wave and beneath a lucid sky. The vessel now glided beside the Seven Mountains and the Drachenfels. The sun, slowly setting, cast his yellow beams over the smooth waters. At the foot of the mountains lay a village deeply sequestered in shade; and above, the Ruin of the Drachenfels caught the richest beams of the sun. Yet thus alone, though lofty, the ray cheered not the gloom that hung over the giant rock: it stood on high, like some great name on which the light of glory may shine, but which is associated with a certain melancholy, from the solitude to which its very height above the level of the herd condemned its owner! CHAPTER X. THE LEGEND OF ROLAND.--THE ADVENTURES OF NYMPHALIN ON THE ISLAND OF NONNEWERTH.--HER SONG.--THE DECAY OF THE FAIRY-FAITH IN ENGLAND. ON the shore opposite the Drachenfels stand the Ruins of Rolandseck,--they are the shattered crown of a lofty and perpendicular mountain, consecrated to the memory of the brave Roland; below, the trees of an island to which the lady of Roland retired, rise thick and verdant from the smooth tide. Nothing can exceed the eloquent and wild grandeur of the whole scene. That spot is the pride and beauty of the Rhine. The legend that consecrates the tower and the island is briefly told; it belongs to a class so common to the Romaunts of Germany. Roland goes to the wars. A false report of his death reaches his betrothed. She retires to the convent in the isle of Nonnewerth, and takes the irrevocable veil. Roland returns home, flushed with glory and hope, to find that the very fidelity of his affianced had placed an eternal barrier between them. He built the castle that bears his name, and which overlooks the monastery, and dwelt there till his death,--happy in the power at least to gaze, even to the last, upon those walls which held the treasure he had lost. The willows droop in mournful luxuriance along the island, and harmonize with the memory that, through the desert of a thousand years, love still keeps green and fresh. Nor hath it permitted even those additions of fiction which, like mosses, gather by time over the truth that they adorn, yet adorning conceal, to mar the simple tenderness of the legend. All was still in the island of Nonnewerth; the lights shone through the trees from the house that contained our travellers. On one smooth spot where the islet shelves into the Rhine met the wandering fairies.