Excerpt from The Pilgrims of the Rhine: To Which Is Added, the Ideal World, Leila, and Calderon, the Courtier Tm; Pilgrims of the Rhine is one of the most pleasing of the author's productions; The secret of its charm is that it was written not only can amen, but, as he' himself tells us, with more delight, and more complete absorption of the mind in its production, than any other of his writings. In this book we find nearly all his best qualities, his sympathy' with the glow and thrill of life, his enthusiasm, his genial, mellow wisdom, his relish of out-of-door life and scenery, his power of throw ing himself at will into all the joyous feelings of youth and of life in its heyday; and we find these qualities freer than elsewhere from the correspond ing faults. It has been justly said that in all of Bulwer's later works there is an undertone of sub dued melancholy; though of hearse-like carols there are few or none, yet all his carols are in a minor key. The Pilgrims of the Rhine is an exception. It is well named in the preface a gar land oi wild flowers cast upon a grave. Yet even here there is nothing morbid or maudlin, no gloat ing over painful details; it recalls to our mind Shelley's Alastor or fair Fidele's grave; it is a tale to make us half in love with death. A young Englishman of a wild, resolute, active nature, who has passed his youth in alternate pleas ure and study, falls in love with the loveliest per son that ever dawned upon a poet's vision, Gertrude Vane, who has Consumption in its most beautiful shape, confesses his love to her, and finds his love returned. There is something in expressibly touching in the tender affection of this youth. Naturally. Hot, stem, and exacting, for the invalid, and his ceaseless, unwearying efforts to amuse her and divert her thoughts from herself. Advised to try a southern climate, Gertrude, whose mother is a German, yearns for the vine-clad hills and romantic forests of, Rhine-land, and prevails on her physician and her father to consent to a pilgri mage along the Rhine, on which she, with her father and lover, sets out from Bruges. On their trip the lover amuses his betrothed with a variety of fairy and love stories, legends, and traditions, comic and grave, of the Rhine and its castles; and from time to time they leave their boat, and make incursions to points of interest in the interior. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.