one after one
Gertrude , charmed by the beauties of the river , desired to continue the voyage to Mayence . The rich Trevylyan persuaded the physician who had attended her to accompany them , and they once more pursued their way along the banks of the feudal Rhine . For what the Tiber is to the classic , the Rhine is to the chivalric age . The steep rock and the gray dismantled tower , the massive and rude picturesque of the feudal days , constitute the great features of the scene ; and you might almost fancy , as you glide along , that you are sailing back adown the river of Time , and the monuments of the pomp and power of old , rising , one after one , upon its shores ! Vane and Du ----- e , the physician , at the farther end of the vessel , conversed upon stones and strata , in that singular pedantry of science which strips nature to a skeleton , and prowls among the dead bones of the world , unconscious of its living beauty . They left Gertrude and Trevylyan to themselves ; and , `` bending o'er the vessel 's laving side , '' they indulged in silence the melancholy with which each was imbued . For Gertrude began to waken , though doubtingly and at intervals , to a sense of the short span that was granted to her life ; and over the loveliness around her there floated that sad and ineffable interest which springs from the presentiment of our own death .