The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon

slender, and handsome, and, like most young British officers of late years, had picked up various small accomplishments on the Continent: he could talk French and Italian, draw landscapes, sing very tolerably, dance divinely, but, above all, he had been wounded at Waterloo. What girl of seventeen, well read in poetry and romance, could resist such a mirror of chivalry and perfection?
    The moment the dance was over he caught up a guitar, and, lolling against the old marble fireplace in an attitude which I am half inclined to suspect was studied, began the little French air of the Troubadour. The squire, however, exclaimed against having anything on Christmas Eve but good old English; upon which the young minstrel, casting up his eye for a moment as if in an effort of memory, struck into another strain, and with a charming air of gallantry gave Herrick's "Night-Piece to Julia:"

            Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee,
            The shooting stars attend thee,
            And the elves also,
            Whose little eyes glow
        Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.

        No Will-o'-the-Wisp mislight thee;
        Nor snake nor slow-worm bite thee;
            But on thy way,
            Not making a stay,
        Since ghost there is none to affright thee,

        Then let not the dark thee cumber;
        What though the moon does slumber,
            The stars of the night
            Will lend thee their light,
        Like tapers clear without number.

        Then, Julia, let me woo thee,
        Thus, thus to come unto me,
            And when I shall meet
            Thy silvery feet,
        My soul I'll pour into thee.
    The song might or might not have been intended in compliment to the fair Julia, for so I found his partner was called; she, however, was certainly unconscious of any such application, for she never looked at the singer, but kept her eyes cast upon the floor. Her face was suffused, it is true, with a beautiful blush, and there was a gentle heaving of the bosom, but all that was doubtless caused by the exercise of the dance; indeed, so great was her indifference that she amused herself with plucking to pieces a choice bouquet of hot-house flowers, and by the time the song was concluded the nosegay lay in ruins on the floor.
    The party now broke up for the night with the kind-hearted old custom of shaking hands. As I passed through the hall on my way to my chamber, the dying embers of the Yule-clog still sent forth a dusky glow, and had it not been the season when "no spirit dares stir abroad," I should have been half tempted to steal from my room at midnight and peep whether the fairies might not be at their revels about the hearth.
    My chamber was in the old part of the mansion, the ponderous furniture of which might have been fabricated in the days of the giants. The room was panelled, with cornices of heavy carved work, in which flowers and grotesque faces were strangely intermingled, and a row of black-looking portraits stared mournfully at me from the walls. The bed was of rich though faded damask, with a lofty tester, and stood in a niche opposite a bow window. I had scarcely got into bed when a strain of music seemed to break forth in the air just below the window. I listened, and found it proceeded from a band which I concluded to be the Waits from some neighboring village. They went round the house, playing under the windows. I drew aside the curtains to hear them more distinctly. The moonbeams fell through the upper part of the casement; partially lighting up the antiquated apartment. The sounds, as they receded, became more soft and aerial, and seemed to accord with the quiet and moonlight. I listened and listened—they became more and more tender and remote, and, as they gradually died away, my head sunk upon the pillow and I fell asleep.
CHRISTMAS DAY.

        Dark and dull night, flie hence away,
        And give the honor to this day
        That sees December turn'd to May.
         . . . . . . .
        Why does the chilling winter's morne
        Smile like a field beset with corn?
        Or smell like to a meade new-shorne,
        Thus on the sudden?—come and see
        The cause why things thus fragrant be.
                                         HERRICK.
    WHEN I woke the next morning it seemed as if all the events of the preceding evening had been a dream, and nothing but the identity of the ancient chamber convinced me of their reality.