has been the loving friend of the needlewoman; ever whispering
suggestions in her ear, or tracing patterns on her work, or gently
guiding her finger through the fantastic maze. She is of the most
exquisite beauty: fragile in form as the gossamer that floats on a
summer's breath--brilliant in appearance as the colours that illumine
the rainbow. So light, that she floats on an atom; so powerful that
she raises empires, nay, the whole earth by her might. Her habits are
the most vagrant imaginable; she is indeed the veriest little gossip
in creation, but her disposition to roam is not more boundless than
her power to gratify it.

One instant she is in the depths of the ocean, loitering upon coral
beds; the next above the stars, revelling in the immensity of space;
one moment she tracks a comet in his course, the next hobnobs with the
sea-king, or foots a measure with mermaids. A most skilful architect,
she will build palaces on the clouds radiant with splendour and
beautiful as herself; then, demolishing them with a breath, she flies
to some moss-grown ruin of the earth, where a glimpse of her
countenance drives away the bat and the owl; the wallflower, the moss,
and the ivy, are displaced by the rose, the lily, and the myrtle; the
damp building is clothed in freshness and splendour, the lofty halls
resound with the melody of the lute and the harp, and the whole scene
is vivid with light and life, with brilliancy and beauty. Again, in an
instant, all is mute, and dim, and desolate, and the versatile
sorceress is hunting the otter with an Esquimaux; or, pillowed on
roses whose fragrance is wafted by softest zephyrs around, she listens
to the strain which the Bulbul pours; or, wrapped in deepest maze of
philosophic thought, she "treads the long extent of backward time," by
the gigantic sepulchres of Egyptian kings; or else she flies "from the
tempest-rocked Hebrides or the icebound Northern Ocean--from the red
man's wilderness of the west--from the steppes of Central Asia--from
the teeming swamps of the Amazon--from the sirocco deserts of
Africa--from the tufted islands of the Pacific--from the heaving
flanks of AEtna--or from the marbled shores of Greece;"--and draws the
whole circle of her enchantments round the needlewoman's fingers,
within the walls of an humble English cottage.

But it were equally unnecessary and useless to dilate on her fairy
wanderings. Suffice it to say that so great is the beneficent
liberality of