“statues gracing,
This noble place in.”
But by the goddess Vanus, just as Frank and I were lamenting this sad omission, the loveliest—at all events one of the loveliest—girls I ever remember to have seen, tripped lightly up the steps, laughing at a dear old clerical papa, who pretended to be alarmed, but wasn't; and something, beating violently under my left brace, told me that my heart had returned from Crewe, as a traveller comes home for a day or so, to prepare himself for another tour. It stayed with me four seconds, and then 'twas hers. “Behold,” I said,
“'Car les beaux yeux Sont les deux sceptres de l'amour,'
the enthronement of the Queen of Beauty.” And the sea-breeze forsook the jealous waves to woo her; the sunlight beamed on her with golden smiles; and the very swallow, turning from his favourite fly, flew past her, twittering admiration. Rough sailors out at sea that day caught sight of this fair vision through the glass, and ceased for half an hour to swear. There she stood, as
“jocund day Stands tip-toe on the misty mountain top;”
like Byron's Mary, on the hill of Annesley, awaiting that mighty hunter, the gallant, handsome Musters, when
“on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar, if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.”
Or she might have been “The Gardener's Daughter,” when,
“Half light, half shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man young.”
But never mind what she might have been, there she was.