nt! Oh, how much
other than yon sweet lily of the high Lusatian valleys, the
shade-loving Flower, the good Maud--herself looked upon with love by
the glad eyes of men, women, children, Fairies, and Angels! oh, other
indeed! And yet, have you, in this thickly clustered enumeration of
unamiable qualities, implicitly heard the CALL which must fasten,
which has fastened, upon the gentle Maud's _haughty_ antithesis--the
serviceable regard, and--the FAVOUR, even of THE FAIRIES.

The FAVOUR!!

Hear, impatient spectator, the simple plot and its brief process. You
are, after a fashion, informed with what studious, persevering, and
unmerciful violation of all gentle decorum and feminine pity, the
lovely marble-souled tyranness has, in the course of the last three
or four years, turned back from her beetle-browed castle-gate, one by
one, as they showed themselves there--a hundred, all worthily
born--otherwise more and less meritorious--petitioners for that
whip-and-javelin-bearing hand. You are NOW to know, that upon this
very morning, an embassy from the willow-wearers all--or, to speak
indeed more germanely to the matter, of the BASKET-BEARERS[22],
waited upon their beautiful enemy with an ultimatum and manifesto in
one, importing first a requisition to surrender; then, in case of
refusal to capitulate, the announcement that HYMEN having found in
CUPID an inefficient ally, he was about associating with himself, in
league offensive, the god MARS, with intent of carrying the
Maiden-fortress by storm, and reducing the aforesaid wild occupants
of the stronghold into captivity--whereunto she made answer--

----our castle's strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn--

herself laughing outrageously to scorn the senders and the sent This
crowning of wrong upon wrong will the Fairies, in the first place,
wreak and right.

[Footnote 22: To German ears--to SEND A BASKET--is to REFUSE A
PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE.]

But further, later upon the same unlucky day, the Kingdom of Elves,
being in full council assembled in the broad light of the sun, upon
the fair greensward; ere the very numerous, but not widely sitting
diet had yet well opened its proceedings--"tramp, tramp, across the
land," came, flying at full speed, boar-spear in hand, our madcap
huntress; and without other note of preparation sounded than their
own thunder, her iron-grey's hoofs were in the thick of the sage
assembly, causing an indecorous trepidation, combined with
dev