Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow: A Novel

Ham. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. ——Hamlet, Act III. Scene I.




There was a woman, beautiful as morning, Sitting beneath the rocks upon the sand Of the waste sea—fair as one flower adorning An icy wilderness—each delicate hand Lay crossed upon her bosom, and the band Of her dark hair had fallen, and so she sat Looking upon the waves.
London and May. What visions of gayety and beauty, of life and brightness, the conjunction of those two words brings before the mind! London in May, when, as it might almost seem, the first gleam of sunshine had called forth, from the essential nothing of obscurity, gay flutterers of a million colored hues, to spread their wings and float joyously in an atmosphere of hope.
For, let who will speak of the balmy breezes and deep azure skies of the children of the South, there are some who would maintain that in the resurrection of the fashionable corners of England's great city from their winter sleep, in the sometimes keen wind that rouses the island spirit of opposition and braces the nerves of the idlers, even in the rapid changes that pass over the sky, there is more exhilaration, more strong incitement to courage and hope, than in the full flush of radiant summer which May often brings in climes held to be more highly favored by Nature.
London, in May, when the streets are filled with gay equipages, whose prancing steeds seem to rejoice in the dignity of their position, taking a part in the great saturnalia of rank and fashion—when the dresses of the ladies are only eclipsed by the brilliancy of the shop-windows which they daily haunt—when the artist and musician bring forth their choicest wares to delight the senses and gratify the perceptions of the great and the little who throng busy London in this fairest season of the year.
It was in London, then, and the month was May. So much being said, little more description is needful: like bold divers, we must leave the coast, and plunge at once into the great sea of humanity, drawing thence, it may be, a pearl which but for our efforts had remained there still. For all this humanity, which our vast London so fitly represents, is composed of individuals; each individual has a separate tale to tell, though all have not the voice to tell it; and in the tale of the hidden life there is sometimes a beauty and pathos, a dignity and wonder, that the dramatist and poet might do well to seize. But it is seldom that they are caught and transferred. Beside the hidden tragedies and heartrending emotions of the every-day life of humanity these transcripts are often pale and colorless—a body that waits for the breath of life to kindle it into beauty.