a girl--it was not the restrained simper of
premature womanhood--it was something which the poet Young might have
remembered, when he composed that perfect line,

"Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair."

She was a mild-eyed maid, and everybody loved her. Young Allan Clare,
when but a boy, sighed for her.

Her yellow hair fell in bright and curling clusters, like

"Those hanging locks
Of young Apollo."

Her voice was trembling and musical. A graceful diffidence pleaded
for her whenever she spake--and, if she said but little, that little
found its way to the heart.

Young, and artless, and innocent, meaning no harm, and thinking none;
affectionate as a smiling infant--playful, yet inobtrusive, as a
weaned lamb--everybody loved her. Young Allan Clare, when but a boy,
sighed for her.

* * * * *

The moon is shining in so brightly at my window, where I write, that
I feel it a crime not to suspend my employment awhile to gaze at her.

See how she glideth, in maiden honor, through the clouds, who divide
on either side to do her homage.

Beautiful vision!--as I contemplate thee, an internal harmony is
communicated to my mind, a moral brightness, a tacit analogy of
mental purity; a calm like _that_ we ascribe in fancy to the favored
inhabitants of thy fairy regions, "argent fields."

I marvel not, O moon, that heathen people, in the "olden times," did
worship thy deity--Cynthia, Diana, Hecate. Christian Europe invokes
thee not by these names now--her idolatry is of a blacker stain:
Belial is her God--she worships Mammon.

False things are told concerning thee, fair planet--for I will ne'er
believe that thou canst take a perverse pleasure in distorting the
brains of us, poor mortals. Lunatics! moonstruck! Calumny invented,
and folly took up, these names. I would hope better things from thy
mild aspect and benign influences.

Lady of Heaven, thou lendest thy pure lamp to light the way to the
virgin mourner, when she goes to seek the tomb where her warrior
lover lies.

Friend of the distressed, thou speakest only _peace_ to the lonely
sufferer, who walks forth in the placid evening, beneath thy gentle
light, to chide at fortune, or to complain of changed friends, or
unhappy loves.

Do I dream, or doth not even now a heavenly calm descend from thee
into my bosom, as I meditate on the chaste loves of Rosamund and her
Clare!

* * * * *