Graham's Magazine, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, March 1841

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XVIII. March, 1841. No. 3.
Contents
Eng d . by J. Sartain
GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XVIII. March, 1841. No. 3.
A TALE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Why don’t he come?
It was a splendid landscape. Far away before the eye stretched a wide, undulating country, checkered with lordly mansions, extensive woodlands, and here and there a quiet little village peeping out from amidst the verdant hills; while away on the verge of the horizon glittered a majestic river, which, winding hither and thither among the uplands, burst at length into view in a flood of glorious light, that lay like a shield of burnished silver in the distance.
Nor was the foreground of the scene less beautiful. Art had there been taxed to rival nature in loveliness. Terraces sinking one beneath another; a verdant lawn that seemed like velvet; rich, old lordly balustrades skirting the garden at your feet; and beyond, open glades, and clumps of forest trees thrown together in apparent confusion, but to produce which the utmost skill had been tasked, evinced at once the taste and opulence, of Lord Deraine, the owner of that rich domain. Such was the scene upon which two beings gazed on a lovely summer afternoon, in the year 16—.
One of these was a youth, just verging into manhood, dressed in a dark, plain suit, with a deep lace collar, and cuffs of the same material. He had apparently been singing, and accompanying himself on the guitar; for his instrument was still held idly in his hand, as he sat at the feet of a lady, into whose face he was looking up with a rapt intensity of gaze, which told that the soul of the page—for such he seemed—was in every glance.
And well might his emotion toward that lovely being be one of unmixed love; for never did a more beautiful creature gaze upon a summer landscape. Tall, stately, with dark lustrous eyes, and a port that might have become a queen, Isabel Mowbray, was a being formed to be loved with an intensity such as this world rarely witnesses. As she now stood gazing out upon the landscape, with one hand shading her brow, and the other thrown back, and resting on the balustrade, thus displaying her snowy neck and bust, and her matchless figure to the best advantage, she seemed a being too beautiful for aught but a poet’s imagination.