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skin it, She found--incredible surprise!-- She found the ring--was _not_ within it. The next tale, called "The Woodman's Daughter," is a story of seduction, madness, and child-murder. These are powerful materials to work with; yet it is not every man's hand that they will suit. In the hands of common-place, they are simply revolting. In the hands of folly and affectation, their repulsiveness is aggravated by the simpering conceits which usurp the place of the strongest passions of our nature. He only is privileged to unveil these gloomy depths of erring humanity, who can subdue their repulsiveness by touches of ethereal feeling; and whose imagination, buoyant above the waves of passion, bears the heart of the reader into havens of calm beauty, even when following the most deplorable aberrations of a child of sin. Such a man is not Mr Patmore. He has no imagination at all--or, what is the same thing, an imagination which welters in impotence, far below the level of the emotions which it ought to overrule. The pitfalls of his tale of misery are covered over with thin sprinklings of asterisks--the poorest subterfuge of an impoverished imagination; and besotted indeed is the senselessness with which he disports himself around their margin. Maud, the victim, is the daughter of Gerald, the woodman; and Merton, the seducer, is the son of a rich squire in the neighbourhood. Maud used to accompany her father to his employment in the woods. "She merely went to think she help'd; And whilst he hack'd and saw'd, The rich squire's son, a young boy then, For whole days, as if aw'd, Stood by, and gazed alternately At Gerald and at Maud. "He sometimes, _in a sullen tone_, Would offer fruits, and she Always received his gifts with an air, So unreserved and free, That half-feign'd distance soon became Familiarity. "Therefore in time, when Gerald shook The woods at his employ, The young heir and the cottage-girl Would steal out to enjoy The music of each other's talk-- A simple girl and boy. "They pass'd their time, both girl and boy, Uncheck'd, unquestion'd; yet They always hid their wanderings By wood and rivulet, Because they could not give themselves A reason why they met. --It may have been in the ancient time, Before Love's earliest ban, Psychean curiosity Had
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