aughter of Britannia with her mother
country, they tore themselves from the arms of their fair ones, with
mutual protestations of truth and fidelity; but before they had passed
the last buoy of the Weser, the greater part of them were forgotten by
their Chloes. The fickle damsels, tired of having their hearts
unoccupied, filled up the gap with new intrigues; but the faithful
ones, who had had constancy enough to endure the Weser ordeal, and who,
when the owners of their hearts were on the other side of the black
buoy, had been guilty of no infidelity--these, they say, have kept
their vow inviolate, until the return of their heroes into their German
father-land, and now merit from the hands of love the reward of their
constancy.

It was therefore less remarkable, that, under the circumstances, the
Lady Libussa could refuse the hand of the blooming knights who
solicited her heart, than that the fair Queen of Ithaca let a whole
host of suitors sigh after her in vain, while her heart had only the
grey-bearded Ulysses in reserve. Nevertheless, rank and high birth so
very much overbalanced the attachment the lady felt for the beloved of
her heart, that any thing more than a Platonic passion--that empty
shade, which neither warms nor nourishes--was not to be hoped.
Although, in those remote times, people cared as little about writing
out genealogies, according to parchment and pedigree, as they did about
arranging classes of beetles according to their wings and feelers, or
flowers according to their stamens, pistils, calyx, and nectary, they
knew, nevertheless, that the delicious grape alone associates with the
stately elm, and not the weed that creeps along the hedge. A
_mesalliance_ caused by a difference of rank an inch wide, did not
then, certainly, excite so much pedantic noise as in our classic days;
but, however, a difference a yard wide, especially if rivals stood in
the interval, and perceived the distance of the two ends, was
observable enough. All this, and more than this, the lady maturely
weighed in her prudent mind, and therefore she did not give a hearing
to the deceitful prattler, passion, loud as it might speak to the
advantage of the youth, who was favoured by love. As a chaste vestal,
she made an irrevocable vow that she would keep her heart locked up in
virgin secresy for the period of her life, and that she would not
answer any address of her suitors, either with her eyes or with her
gestures; with t