he village belle. She was a goddess! She would
become a throne! Apparently acquiescing in his matrimonial project, she
now professed her willingness to receive his bride-elect. Accordingly,
she sent her own milliner--mantua-maker--what you will,--to array her in
the complete toilette of a lady of fashion. The blushing damsel appeared
in the most elegant attire, and took her place in the maternal
drawing-room, amongst the sisters of the enraptured lover. Alas!
enraptured no more! The rustic beauty, where could it have flown? The
belle of the village was transformed into a very awkward young lady.
Goddess!--She was a simpleton. Become a throne!--She could not sit upon
a chair. The charm was broken. The application we need hardly make.
There may be certain uncultivated men of genius on whom it is possible
to practise a like malicious kindness.

We would rather preface our notice of the life and works of Andersen, by
a motto taken from our own countryman Blake, artist and poet, and a man
of somewhat kindred nature:--[2]

"Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me--

'Pipe a song about a lamb;'
So I piped with merry cheer.
'Piper, pipe that song again!--'
So I piped--he wept to hear.

'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe,
Sing thy songs of happy cheer--'
So I sang the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

'Piper, sit thee down and _write_,
In a book that all may read.'
Then he vanished from my sight;
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear."

Such was the form under which the muse may be said to have visited and
inspired Andersen. He ought to have been exclusively the poet of
children and of childhood. He ought never to have seen, or dreamed, of
an Apollo six feet high, looking sublime, and sending forth dreadful
arrows from the far-resounding bow; he should have looked only to that
"child upon the cloud," or rather, he should have seen his little muse
as she walks upon the earth--we have her in Gainsborough's picture--with
her tattered petticoat, and her bare feet, and her broken pitcher, but
looking withal with such a sweet sad contentedness upon the world, that
surely, one thinks, she must have filled that pitcher and drawn the
water which she carries--without, however, knowin