uired of any save to
stretch forth his hand and gather it from the sturdy oaks that stood
generously inviting him with their sweet ripe fruit. The clear streams
and running brooks yielded their savoury limpid waters in noble
abundance. The busy and sagacious bees fixed their republic in the clefts
of the rocks and hollows of the trees, offering without usance the
plenteous produce of their fragrant toil to every hand. The mighty cork
trees, unenforced save of their own courtesy, shed the broad light bark
that served at first to roof the houses supported by rude stakes, a
protection against the inclemency of heaven alone. Then all was peace,
all friendship, all concord; as yet the dull share of the crooked plough
had not dared to rend and pierce the tender bowels of our first mother
that without compulsion yielded from every portion of her broad fertile
bosom all that could satisfy, sustain, and delight the children that then
possessed her. Then was it that the innocent and fair young shepherdess
roamed from vale to vale and hill to hill, with flowing locks, and no
more garments than were needful modestly to cover what modesty seeks and
ever sought to hide. Nor were their ornaments like those in use to-day,
set off by Tyrian purple, and silk tortured in endless fashions, but the
wreathed leaves of the green dock and ivy, wherewith they went as bravely
and becomingly decked as our Court dames with all the rare and
far-fetched artifices that idle curiosity has taught them. Then the
love-thoughts of the heart clothed themselves simply and naturally as the
heart conceived them, nor sought to commend themselves by forced and
rambling verbiage. Fraud, deceit, or malice had then not yet mingled with
truth and sincerity. Justice held her ground, undisturbed and unassailed
by the efforts of favour and of interest, that now so much impair,
pervert, and beset her. Arbitrary law had not yet established itself in
the mind of the judge, for then there was no cause to judge and no one to
be judged. Maidens and modesty, as I have said, wandered at will alone
and unattended, without fear of insult from lawlessness or libertine
assault, and if they were undone it was of their own will and pleasure.
But now in this hateful age of ours not one is safe, not though some new
labyrinth like that of Crete conceal and surround her; even there the
pestilence of gallantry will make its way to them through chinks or on
the air by the zeal of its accur