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MILDRED PEMBERTON.
I never saw a girl for whom the epithet lovely seemed so completely suited as Mildred Pemberton: she was made up of all bright colours. Her lip was of the most vivid scarlet, her cheek of the warmest rose, her eyes of that violet blue so rarely seen except in a child, and her skin of a dazzling white, so transparent, that the azure veins in her temples seemed almost as blue as her eyes. Her hair curled naturally, and no poetical simile ever went beyond the truth of their brightness. Gold, sunshine, &c., were the only comparisons for those glossy ringlets. When she was two-and-twenty she scarcely looked sixteen, and her manners were as childish as her face and figure. She was guileless, enthusiastic, and sensitive; too ignorant in every way both of books and things perhaps to be called clever, but she had in herself all the materials for becoming so: with that quick perception which the imagination always gives, and the energy which is the groundwork of all excellence.
Sir Henry Pemberton, her father, was a severe man, and it was said that a young and beautiful wife had withered in the ungenial atmosphere of his cold stern temper. Only that Englishmen have a travelling mania, and the more comfortable they are at home, the less they can abide to stay there, no one could have accounted for Sir Henry's coming to Rome. He cared nothing for the fine arts. I doubt whether the finest music would have wrung from him more than Dr. Johnson's ejaculation, when the difficulty of some celebrated overture was dwelt upon, "Difficult!—I wish it were impossible." I never heard him make but one remark on painting, namely, "wonder that people should go to so much trouble and expense to have that on canvass, which they see better in the streets any day." For antiquities he had no taste, and society he positively disliked. His daughter, however, had his share of enjoyment and her own too—she was delighted with everything. The poetry of her nature was called forth by the poetical atmosphere of Rome. She had that peculiar organization, on which music has influence like "the enchanter's wand;" while Corinne and Chateaubriand had already excited all her sympathies for "the world of ashes at her feet." But, after seeing her at the Spanish ambassador's ball dancing with the young Count Arrezi, I was persuaded that the fair English girl was investing all things around her with that poetry which the heart flings over the commonplaces of life once "and once only."
A night or two afterwards (for we both lived in the Piazza di Spagna) I heard the chords of a guitar accompanying a song from "Metastasio;" I also heard a window unclose, and then came a few extempore stanzas in honour of a certain wreath of flowers which I took for granted were thrown into the street. Now a guitar, a cloak, moon light, and a handsome cavalier, what nature—at least what feminine nature—could resist them? Accustomed to the seclusion of a country-seat, or the small coterie of a country town, where her taste, feeling, and fancy alike were dormant, the effect of Rome on Mildred Pemberton was like a sudden introduction into fairyland. Her eyes and senses were alike fascinated—she lived in a dream of realized poetry. Love
