A close mild mouth ... eyes of no color;

Once they might have smiled, but never, never

Have forgot themselves in smiling.”

You cannot imagine, I think, any life more unlike what Aurora had been used to in her home in Florence, than the one to which she came in England. She describes her aunt’s life as—

“A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,

Accounting that to leap from perch to perch

Was act and joy enough for any bird.

Dear Heaven, how silly are the things

That live in thickets, and eat berries!

I, alas, a wild bird scarcely fledged,