n your left
which Sidney's sister gave you; and the silver-hilted Toledo which an
Italian marquis gave you on a certain occasion of which you never choose
to talk, like a prudent and modest gentleman as you are; but of which
the gossips talk, of course, all the more, and whisper that you saved
his life from bravoes--a dozen, at the least; and had that sword for
your reward, and might have had his beautiful sister's hand beside, and
I know not what else; but that you had so many lady-loves already that
you were loath to burden yourself with a fresh one. That, at least, we
know to be a lie, fair Frank; for your heart is as pure this day as when
you knelt in your little crib at Burrough, and said--

"Four corners to my bed
Four angels round my head;
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on."

And who could doubt it (if being pure themselves, they have instinctive
sympathy with what is pure), who ever looked into those great deep blue
eyes of yours, "the black fringed curtains of whose azure lids,"
usually down-dropt as if in deepest thought, you raise slowly, almost
wonderingly each time you speak, as if awakening from some fair dream
whose home is rather in your platonical "eternal world of supra-sensible
forms," than on that work-day earth wherein you nevertheless acquit
yourself so well? There--I must stop describing you, or I shall catch
the infection of your own euphuism, and talk of you as you would have
talked of Sidney or of Spenser, or of that Swan of Avon, whose song
had just begun when yours--but I will not anticipate; my Lady Bath is
waiting to give you her rejoinder.

"Ah, my silver-tongued scholar! and are you, then, the poet? or have
you been drawing on the inexhaustible bank of your friend Raleigh, or my
cousin Sidney? or has our new Cygnet Immerito lent you a few unpublished
leaves from some fresh Shepherd's Calendar?"

"Had either, madam, of that cynosural triad been within call of my
most humble importunities, your ears had been delectate with far nobler
melody."

"But not our eyes with fairer faces, eh? Well, you have chosen your
nymphs, and had good store from whence to pick, I doubt not. Few
young Dulcineas round but must have been glad to take service under so
renowned a captain?"

"The only difficulty, gracious countess, has been to know where to fix
the wandering choice of my bewildered eyes, where all alike are fair,
and all alike facund."

"We unde