ified at trifles, we beseech you, and be not gross in your
censure of innocent and delicate delights. Byron's exquisitely sensitive
modesty was shocked by the sight of waltzing, which he would not have
suffered the Guiccioli, while she was in his keeping, to have indulged
in even with her own husband. Thus it is that sinners see sin only where
it is not--and shut their eyes to it when it comes upon them open-armed,
bare-bosomed, and brazen-faced, and clutches them in a grasp more like
the hug of a bear than the embrace of a woman. Away with such mawkish
modesty and mouthing morality--for 'tis the slang of the hypocrite.
Waltzing does our old eyes good to look on it, when the whole Circling
Flight goes gracefully and airily on its orbit, and we think we see the
realisation of that picture (we are sad misquoters) when the Hours--

"Knit by the Graces and the Loves in dance,
Lead on the eternal spring!"

But the Circling Flight breaks into airy fragments, the Instrumental
Band is hushed, and so is the whole central Drawing-room; for,
blushingly obedient to the old man's beck, THE STAR OF EVE--so call we
her who is our heart's-ease and heart's-delight--the granddaughter of
one whom hopelessly we loved in youth, yet with no unreturned
passion--but

"The course of true love never yet ran smooth"--

comes glidingly to our side, and having heard our wish breathed
whisperingly into her ear--a rare feature when small, thin, and delicate
as a leaf--just as glidingly she goes, in stature that is almost
stateliness, towards her Harp, and assuming at once a posture that would
have charmed Canova, after a few prelusive touches that betray the hand
of a mistress in the divine art, to the enchantment of the white motions
of those graceful arms and fingers fine, awakes a spirit in the strings
accordant to the spirit in that voice worthy to have blended with St
Cecilia's in her hymning orisons. A Hebrew melody! And now your heart
feels the utter mournfulness of these words,

"By Babel's streams we sat and wept!"

How sudden, yet how unviolent, the transitions among all our feelings!
Under no other power so swift and so soft as that of Music. The soul
that sincerely loves Music, offers at no time the slightest resistance
to her sway, but yields itself up entirely to all its moods and
measures, led captive by each successive strain through the whole
mysterious world of modulated air. Not a smile over all that hush.
En