ulders; gaze upon that pure brow
where grace and youth preside; bathe your soul in the soft brightness of
that blue and limpid glance; bend to taste the perfumed breath of that
smiling mouth; tremble at the touch of those blonde tresses, twined in
bewildering mazes behind the head and falling over the temples in waving
masses; fervent worshipper at the shrine of beauty, fall into ecstasies;
then imagine the opposite of this charming picture, and you have Lady
Penock.

This apparition, in the centre of the ancient forum, completely upset my
meditations. J.J. Rousseau says in his Confessions that he forgot Mme.
de Larnage in seeing the Pont du Gard. So I forgot the Coliseum at the
sight of Lady Penock. Explain, dear Edgar, what fatality attended my
steps, that ever afterwards this baleful beauty pursued me?

Under the arches of the Coliseum, beneath the dome of St. Peter, in
Pagan Rome and in Catholic Rome, in front of the Laocoeon, before the
Communion of St. Jerome, by Dominichino, on the banks of Lake Albano,
under the shades of the Villa Borghese, at Tivoli in the Sibyl's temple,
at Subiaco in the Convent of St. Benoit, under every moon and by every
sun I saw her start up at my side. To get away from her I took flight
and travelled post to Tuscany. I found her at the foot of the falls of
Terni, at the tomb of St. Francis d'Assise, under Hannibal's gate at
Spoletta, at the table d'hote Perouse at Arezzo, on the threshold of
Petrarch's house; finally, the first person I met in the Piazza of the
Grand Duke at Florence, before the Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini, Edgar,
was Lady Penock. At Pisa she appeared to me in the Campo Santo; in the
Gulf of Genoa her bark came near capsizing mine; at Turin I found her at
the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities; her and no one else! And, what was
so amusing, my Lady on seeing me became agitated, blushed and looked
down, and believing herself the object of an ungovernable passion, she
mumbled through her long teeth, "Shocking! Shocking!"

Tired of war, I bade adieu to Italy and crossed the mountains; besides,
dear country, I sighed to see you once more. I passed through Savoy and
when I saw the mountains of Dauphiny loom up against the distant horizon
my heart beat wildly, my eyes filled with tears, and I felt like a
returning exile, and know not what false pride restrained me from
springing to the ground and kissing the soil of France!

Hail! noble and generous land, the home of intellig