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the breezy west, and her gait, goddess-like, was as that of a winged angel
new alit from heaven's high floor; the pearly fairness of her complexion
was stained by a pure suffusion; her voice resembled the low, subdued tenor
of a flute. It is easiest perhaps to describe by contrast. I have detailed
the perfections of my sister; and yet she was utterly unlike Idris.
Perdita, even where she loved, was reserved and timid; Idris was frank and
confiding. The one recoiled to solitude, that she might there entrench
herself from disappointment and injury; the other walked forth in open day,
believing that none would harm her. Wordsworth has compared a beloved
female to two fair objects in nature; but his lines always appeared to me
rather a contrast than a similitude:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye,
Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.
Such a violet was sweet Perdita, trembling to entrust herself to the very
air, cowering from observation, yet betrayed by her excellences; and
repaying with a thousand graces the labour of those who sought her in her
lonely bye-path. Idris was as the star, set in single splendour in the
dim anadem of balmy evening; ready to enlighten and delight the subject
world, shielded herself from every taint by her unimagined distance from
all that was not like herself akin to heaven.
I found this vision of beauty in Perdita's alcove, in earnest conversation
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