This elegance of manner, then, must be the pure result of elegance of soul; and if there is a charm in woman, I have hitherto vainly sought, and prized beyond all I have discovered, it is this refined, celestial, native elegance of soul, which effusing its spell through every thought, word, and motion, of its enviable possessor, resembles the peculiar property of gold, which subtilely insinuates itself through the most minute and various particles, without losing any thing of its own intrinsic nature by the amalgamation. In answer to the flattering observation which had elicited this digression I replied: That far from regretting the consequences, I was emamoured of an accident that had procured me such happiness as I now enjoyed (even with the risk of life itself;) and that I believed there were few who, like me, would not prefer peril to security, were the former always the purchase of such felicity as the latter, at least on me, had never bestowed. Whether this reply savoured too much of the world’s commonplace gallantry, or that she thought there was more of the head than the heart in it, I know not; but, by my soul, in spite of a certain haughty motion of the head not unfrequent with her, I thought she looked wonderfully inclined to laugh in my face, though she primed up her mouth, and fancied she looked like a nun, when her lip pouted with the smiling archness of a Hebe. In short, I never felt more in all its luxury the comfort of looking like a fool; and to do away the no very agreeable sensation which the conviction of being laughed at awakens, as a _pis-aller_, I began to examine the harp, and expressed the surprise I felt at its singular construction. “Are you fond of music?” she asked with _naivette_. “Sufficiently so,” said I, “to risk my life for it.” She smiled, and cast a look at the window, as much as to say, “I understand you.” As I now was engaged in examining her harp, I observed that it resembled less any instrument of that kind I had seen, than the drawing of the Davidic lyre in Montfaucon. “Then,” said she, with animation, “this is another collateral proof of the antiquity of its origin, which I never before heard adduced, and which sanctions that universally received tradition among us, by which we learn, that we are indebted to the first Milesian colony that settled here for this charming instrument, although some modern historians suppose that we obtained it from Scandinavia.” *