rose.'

So Bedingfield, conceding to friend Damon 'the nymph that sparkles in
her dress,' avows his own fondness for the maid 'whose cheeks the hand
of Nature paints.' Of this young person he says:

'No art she knows or seeks to know;
No charm to wealthy pride will owe;
No gems, no gold she needs to wear;
She shines intrinsically fair.'

Cowley, it will be remembered, in sketching his notion of true
happiness, included in it the picture of

'A mistress moderately fair,
And good as guardian angels are,
Only beloved and loving me!'

With that 'one dear She'--and a few other things--he thought he could
get on pretty comfortably. But probably at once the most obliging and
most exigent of modern lovers was the sentimental gentleman to whose
feelings Mrs. Bowen-Graves ('Stella') gave appropriate voice in the
over-familiar 'My Queen.'

'I will not dream of her tall and stately--
She that I love may be fairy light;'

nay, more:

'I will not say she should walk sedately--
Whatever she does, it will sure be right.

'And she may be humble or proud, my lady,
Or that sweet calm which is just between'

(as if anyone could be a 'sweet calm'!); moreover:

'Whether her birth be noble or lowly,
I care no more than the spirit above;'

but there is at least one point upon which this gentleman insists:

'She must be courteous, she must be holy,
Pure in her spirit, that maiden I love'--

and, being that, she may depend upon the stars falling, and the angels
weeping, ere he ceases to love her, his Queen, his Queen!

Ah! the poets have much to answer for. Here is Mr. Longfellow assuring
his readers that

'No one is so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own;'

and here is Sir Edwin Arnold declaring, with equal confidence, that

'Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours
For one lone soul another lonely soul'--

et caetera, et caetera. Is it any wonder that, in the face of such
encouragement, young men go on dreaming, each of the _dimidium suae
animae_ whom he is to meet by-and-by, and framing to that end all sorts
of beautiful ideals? It may be that the Shes thus dreamed of are 'not
impossible'--they may 'arrive;' but it is as well not to be too
sanguine. And, above all, it is as well not to draw too extravagant a
picture, if only because you may not be worthy of the original when you
see it. Corydon is too disposed to ex