It seemed as if what was absent in her mind had been added to her physical nature.  She had the same excess of animal life which is observed in young children; but, unlike them, her muscular force was great enough to give it play.  Her walk was like a bounding dance, and her common speech like a gay and sparkling song;—­her laugh echoed from hill to hill, like the tone of some sweet, but wild and shrill instrument of music.  She out-stripped the boldest of the youths in the chase; skimmed like some phantom shape along the edge of precipices approached even by the wild goat with fear; and looked round with careless joy, from pinnacles which interrupted the flight of the eagle through the air.

With such beauty, and such accomplishments, for the place and time, how many hearts might not Julie have broken!  Julie did not break one.  She was admired, loved, followed; and she fled, rending the air with her shrieks of musical laughter.  Disconcerted, stunned, mortified, and alarmed, the wooer pursued his mistress only with his eyes, and blessed the saints that he had not gained such a phantom for a wife.

Romance of History.

* * * * *

INTERIOR OF ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL.

If in exterior magnificence St. Paul’s surpasses all our other buildings, the interior, however, from many causes, is not so beautiful.  You enter, and the naked loftiness of the walls, and the cold and barren stateliness of every thing around, would induce one to believe that an enemy—­were such a thing possible in Britain—­had taken London, and plundered the cathedral of all its national and religious paintings, together with a world of such rare works of curiosity or antiquity as find a sanctuary in the great churches of other countries.  A few statues, some of them of moderate worth, are scattered about the recesses; and certain coloured drawings, done by the yard by Sir James Thornhill, may be distinguished far above; but all between is empty space, save where some tattered banners, pierced with many a shot, the memorials of our naval victories, hang dusty half-pillar high.  This nakedness, however, is not so much the fault of the architect as of the clergy, who aught to have adorned this noble pile more largely by the hand of the painter and the sculptor.  It was the wish of Wren to beautify the inside of the cupola with rich and durable Mosaic, and he intended to have sought the help of four of the most eminent artists in Italy for that purpose; but he was frustrated by the seven commissioners, who said the thing was so much of a novelty that it would not be liked, and also so expensive that it could not be paid for.  The present work, too, over the communion table was intended only to serve till something more worthy could be prepared; and, to supply its place, Wren had modelled a magnificent altar, consisting of four pillars wreathed of the finest Greek marbles, supporting a hemispherical canopy,