se days, which seem to record the gloomy
utterances of a strange young woman who has wandered into the magic
scene in _Der Freischuetz_, and who mixes up the moanings of her passion
with descriptions of the sights, and sounds she there finds around her.
It was of quite another stamp. It dealt with a phraseology of sentiment
peculiar to itself--a "patter," as it were, which came to be universally
recognized in drawing-rooms. It spoke of maidens plighting their troth,
of Phyllis enchanting her lover with her varied moods, of marble halls
in which true love still remained the same. It apostrophized the shells
of ocean; it tenderly described the three great crises of a particular
heroine's life by mentioning her head-dress; it told of how the lover of
Pretty Jane would have her meet him in the evening. Well, all the world
was content to accept this conventional phraseology, and behind the
paraphernalia of "enchanted moon-beams" and "fondest glances" and
"adoring sighs" perceived and loved the sentiment that could find no
simpler utterance. Some of us, hearing the half-forgotten songs again,
suddenly forget the odd language, and the old pathos springs up again,
as fresh as in the days when our first love had just come home from her
boarding-school; while others, who have no old-standing acquaintance
with these memorable songs, have somehow got attracted to them by the
mere quaintness of their speech and the simplicity of their airs. Master
Harry Trelyon was no great critic of music. When Wenna Rosewarne sang
that night "She wore a wreath of roses," he fancied he had never
listened to anything so pathetic. When she sang "Meet me by moonlight
alone," he was delighted with the spirit and half-humorous, half-tender
grace of the composition. As she sang "When other lips and other
hearts," it seemed to him that there were no songs like the
old-fashioned songs, and that the people who wrote those ballads were
more frank and simple and touching in their speech than writers
now-a-days. Somehow, he began to think of the drawing-rooms of a former
generation, and of the pictures of herself his grandmother had drawn for
him many a time. Had she a high waist to that white silk dress in which
she ran away to Gretna? and did she have ostrich feathers on her head?
Anyhow, he entirely believed what she had told him of the men of that
generation. They were capable of doing daring things for the sake of a
sweetheart. Of course his grandfather had