overed with green cloth, but above are bare and white. The second
window is nearly opposite the bed, and in front of it is the
princess's reading-table, some two feet and a half square, covered by
a red cloth with a white border and dainty fringe; and beside it her
seat, not at all like a reading-chair in Oxford, but a very small
three-legged stool like a music-stool, covered with crimson cloth. On
the table are a book, setup at a slope fittest for reading, and an
hour-glass. Under the shelf near the table, so as to be easily reached
by the outstretched arm, is a press full of books. The door of this
has been left open, and the books, I am grieved to say, are rather in
disorder, having been pulled about before the princess went to bed,
and one left standing on its side.

Opposite this window, on the white wall, is a small shrine or picture
(I can't see which, for it is in sharp retiring perspective), with a
lamp before it, and a silver vessel hung from the lamp, looking like
one for holding incense.

The bed is a broad four-poster, the posts being beautifully wrought
golden or gilded rods, variously wreathed and branched, carrying a
canopy of warm red. The princess's shield is at the head of it, and
the feet are raised entirely above the floor of the room, on a dais
which projects at the lower end so as to form a seat, on which the
child has laid her crown. Her little blue slippers lie at the side of
the bed, her white dog beside them; the coverlid is scarlet, the white
sheet folded half way back over it; the young girl lies straight,
bending neither at waist nor knee, the sheet rising and falling over
her in a narrow unbroken wave, like the shape of the coverlid of the
last sleep, when the turf scarcely rises. She is some seventeen or
eighteen years old, her head is turned towards us on the pillow, the
cheek resting on her hand, as if she were thinking, yet utterly calm
in sleep, and almost colourless. Her hair is tied with a narrow
riband, and divided into two wreaths, which encircle her head like a
double crown. The white nightgown hides the arm, raised on the pillow,
down to the wrist.

At the door of the room an angel enters (the little dog, though lying
awake, vigilant, takes no notice). He is a very small angel; his head
just rises a little above the shelf round the room, and would only
reach as high as the princess's chin, if she were standing up. He has
soft grey wings, lustreless; and his dress, of subdued