Forsaken, lost, and wandering, she lives more with the wild beast and
bird than with her own kind. Hunger and cold are her comrades; sadness
hovers over, and solitude besets her round. Unheeded and unvalued, she
should die; but she both lives and grows. The green wilderness nurses
her, and becomes to her a mother; feeds her on juicy berry, on
saccharine root and nut.

There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly.
There must be something, too, in its dews which heals with sovereign
balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate no passion, no sense; its
temperature tends to harmony; its breezes, you would say, bring down
from heaven the germ of pure thought and purer feeling. Not grotesquely
fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage, not violently vivid the
colouring of flower and bird. In all the grandeur of these forests
there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness.

The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, bestowed on deer and
dove, has not been denied to the human nursling. All solitary, she has
sprung up straight and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine
mould; they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, unaltered
by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has dealt rudely with the
surface of her frame; no burning sun has crisped or withered her
tresses. Her form gleams ivory-white through the trees; her hair flows
plenteous, long, and glossy; her eyes, not dazzled by vertical fires,
beam in the shade large and open, and full and dewy. Above those eyes,
when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair and ample--a
clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, should knowledge ever come, might
write a golden record. You see in the desolate young savage nothing
vicious or vacant. She haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful, though
of what one so untaught can think it is not easy to divine.

On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly
alone--for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues
away, she knew not where--she went up from the vale, to watch Day take
leave and Night arrive. A crag overspread by a tree was her station. The
oak roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat; the oak boughs, thick-leaved,
wove a canopy.

Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to
the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night
entered, quiet as death. The wind fell, the birds ceased singi