“Within doors her principal diversion is music, vocal and instrumental, in both which she is no mean professor.  Her voice is wonderfully fine; but, till I got used to it, I confess it staggered me.  It is for all the world like that of a piping bulfinch, while from her size and stature you would expect notes to drown the deep organ.  The shake, which most fine singers reserve for the close or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the composition; so that her time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double motion, like the earth,—­running the primary circuit of the tune, and still revolving upon its own axis.  The effect, as I said before, when you are used to it, is as agreeable as it is altogether new and surprising.

“The spacious apartment of her outward frame lodgeth a soul in all respects disproportionate.  Of more than mortal make, she evinceth withal a trembling sensibility, a yielding infirmity of purpose, a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train of diffident and blushing virtues, which for their habitation usually seek out a feeble frame, an attenuated and meagre constitution.  With more than man’s bulk, her humors and occupations are eminently feminine.  She sighs,—­being six foot high.  She languisheth,—­being two feet wide.  She worketh slender sprigs upon the delicate muslin,—­her fingers being capable of moulding a Colossus.  She sippeth her wine out of her glass daintily,—­her capacity being that of a tun of Heidelberg.  She goeth mincingly with those feet of hers,—­whose solidity need not fear the black ox’s pressure.

“Softest and largest of thy sex, adieu!  By what parting attribute may I salute thee?—­last and best of the Titanesses!—­Ogress, fed with milk instead of blood!—­not least, or least handsome, among Oxford’s stately structures!—­Oxford, who, in its deadest time of vacation, can never properly be said to be empty, having thee to fill it!”

* * * * *

MY PALACE.

Wound round and round within his mystic veil
The poet hid a noble truth;
The Soul’s Art-Palace then he named the tale
Of those far days in youth.

I sought that palace on its haughty height,
And came to know its starry joys,
Its sudden blackness, and the withering blight
Of all its mortal toys.

At length the soul took lesson from her past,
And found a vale wherein to dwell,
With no Arcadian visions overcast
Or history to tell.

My fellows tended wandering flocks and herds,
Or tilled and nursed their scanty corn;
Little they heeded life that grew to words,
Yet gave no man their scorn.

Like them I wrought my task and took its gain,
That one might serve their homely need,
When skies were dark, and every cloud a pain,
And there were mouths to feed.

Thus labored day by day these unskilled hands,
Whose only master was a willing heart,
Till barren space smiled into garden-lands
Where roses shone apart.