the elements, had bestowed on her each his appropriate gift,—­the Air its crispness, the Earth its variety, the Sun its brightness and its ruddy glow, the very Water from the well its freshness and its fluent forms; the stars repeated their friendliness in her eyes, the grass dimpled her pliant feet, the breeze tossed her brown hair in triumphs of the unstudied becoming, and from the wildness all about her she had her wit and her delightful ways; Morning lent her her cheerfulness, Evening her pensiveness, and Night her soul.

But Night, that had given her the Christian soul, true and wise, self-reliant and aspiring, brought also the surprise and the peril that should put it to the proof; for once, when the hunter was belated on his path, and sudden midnight had caught him beyond the mountain, far from the rest of his hearth and the song of his darling, came the red Pawnees, a treacherous crew,—­doubly godless because ungrateful, who had broken the hunter’s bread and slept on the hunter’s blanket,—­and laid waste his hearth, and stole away his very heart.  For they dragged her many a fearful mile of darkness and distraction, through the black woods, and grim recesses of the rocks; and there they stripped her naked, and bound her to a stake, as the day was breaking.  But the Christian heart was within her, and the Christian soul upheld her, and the Christian’s God was by her side; and so she stood, and waited, and was brave.

And here still she stands, as the sculptor’s soul sat down before her, in a vision of faith and tenderness, to receive her image,—­stands and waits for the pity and the help of you and me, her brothers and her lovers.  We long to rescue her and take her to our hearts; we are touched by her predicament, as Michelet tells us the heart of the beholder is moved by the bound Andromeda of Puget,—­that great artist in whom dwelt the suffering soul of a depraved age, and who all his life long sculptured forlorn captives,—­“Ah, would I had been there to rescue the darling!”

But we are told of the Andromeda, that, unconscious and almost dead, she knows not where she is, nor who has come to set her free; for, paralyzed by the chafing of her chains, and even more by fear, she cannot stand, and seems utterly exhausted.

Not so with our Andromeda.  Horror possesses her, but indignation also; she is terrified, but brave; she shrinks, but she repels; and while all her beautiful body trembles and retreats, her countenance confronts her captors, and her steady gaze forbids them.  “Touch me not!” she says, with every shuddering limb and every tensely-braced muscle, with lineaments all eloquent with imperious disgust,—­“Touch me not!”

Her lips quiver, and tears are in her eyes, (we do not forget that it is of marble we are speaking,—­there are tears in her eyes,) but they only linger there; she is not weeping now; her chin trembles, and one of her hands is convulsively clenched,—­but it is with the anguish of her sore besetting, not the spasm of mortal fear.  Though Heaven and Earth, indeed, might join to help her, we yet know that the soul of the maiden will help itself,—­that her hope clings fast, and her courage is undaunted, and her faith complete.