hope, cheering the gentle and maiden heart, which was their worthy temple! Again, in what a noble and high spirit is her rejection of Charles's ungenerous suit. Only one of a school, whose profligacy was the cold result of vanity, could have insulted a purity so simple and so apparent, by dishonourable affection. But it is mockery to use the word affection in such a case. I do not believe that affection can exist with truth, without the ideal, and without blending with itself all that is best and most earnest in our nature. Charles thinks far less of Alice than of the sneer of Buckingham and the jest of Rochester.
As I said before, a series of pictures might be formed of Alice in the various situations of "Woodstock." There are three which have always singularly impressed my imagination. The first is the little turret, with Dr. Rocheliffe in the little turret-chamber, when he proposes to her to make a seeming assignation with the king: there is the dignity that would light her eyes, the timidity that would colour her cheek, and the intuitive sense of right that could not for a moment tamper with its fine sense of maidenly propriety. Then the second, where she stands in the green coppice, looking, as she thinks, her last on the lover who leaves her under the most bitter perversion of her real meaning: her cheek is white as monumental marble, and her long fair curls damp with the heavy dews
