iar
pride--some one creature to whom nature has been especially kind, and
whose personal beauty, sweetness of disposition, and felt superiority of
mind and manner, single her out, unconsciously, as an object of
attraction and praise, making her the May-day Queen of the unending
year. Such a darling was Lucy Fleming ere she had finished her
thirteenth year; and strangers, who had heard tell of her loveliness,
often dropt in, as if by accident, to see the Beauty of Rydal-mere. Her
parents rejoiced in their child; nor was there any reason why they
should dislike the expression of delight and wonder with which so many
regarded her. Shy was she as a woodland bird, but as fond too of her
nest; and when there was nothing near to disturb her, her life was
almost a perpetual hymn. From joy to sadness, and from sadness to joy;
from silence to song, and from song to silence; from stillness like that
of the butterfly on the flower, to motion like that of the same creature
wavering in the sunshine over the wood-top--was to Lucy as welcome a
change as the change of lights and shadows, breezes and calms, in the
mountain-country of her birth.

One summer day, a youthful stranger appeared at the door of the house,
and after an hour's stay, during which Lucy was from home, asked if they
would let him have lodging with them for a few months--a single room for
bed and books, and that he would take his meals with the family.
Enthusiastic boy! to him poetry had been the light of life, nor did ever
creature of poetry belong more entirely than he to the world of
imagination. He had come into the free mountain region from the
confinement of college walls, and his spirit expanded within him like a
rainbow. No eyes had he for realities--all nature was seen in the light
of genius--not a single object at sunrise and sunset the same. All was
beautiful within the circle of the green hill-tops, whether shrouded in
the soft mists or clearly outlined in a cloudless sky. Home, friends,
colleges, cities--all sunk away into oblivion, and HARRY HOWARD felt as
if wafted off on the wings of a spirit, and set down in a land beyond
the sea, foreign to all he had before experienced, yet in its perfect
and endless beauty appealing every hour more tenderly and strongly to a
spirit awakened to new power, and revelling in new emotion. In that
cottage he took up his abode. In a few weeks came a library of books in
all languages; and there was much wondering talk over