I loved them for smiling on her, for handing her from her seat to the piano with reverent courtesy: gladly would I have taken their place: I was content, however, to be only a spectator; for it was not my rank, but my youth, I was glad to fancy, which denied me that blissful honour. But as she sang, I could not help stealing up to the piano; and, feasting my greedy eyes with every motion of those delicious lips, listen and listen, entranced, and living only in that melody. Suddenly, after singing two or three songs, she began fingering the keys, and struck into an old air, wild and plaintive, rising and falling like the swell of an Æolian harp upon a distant breeze. "Ah! now," she said, "if I could get words for that! What an exquisite lament somebody might write to it, if they could only thoroughly take in the feeling and meaning of it." "Perhaps," I said, humbly, "that is the only way to write songs--to let some air get possession of ones whole soul, and gradually inspire the words for itself; as the old Hebrew prophets had music played before them, to wake up the prophetic spirit within them." She looked up, just as if she had been unconscious of my presence till that moment. "Ah! Mr. Locke!--well, if you understand my meaning so thoroughly, perhaps you will try and write some words for me." "I am afraid that I do not enter sufficiently into the meaning of the air." "Oh! then, listen while I play it over again. I am sure _you_ ought to appreciate anything so sad and tender." And she did play it, to my delight, over again, even more gracefully and carefully than before--making the inarticulate sounds speak a mysterious train of thoughts and emotions. It is strange how little real intellect, in women especially, is required for an exquisite appreciation of the beauties of music--perhaps, because it appeals to the heart and not the head. She rose and left the piano, saying archly, "Now, don't forget your promise;" and I, poor fool, my sunlight suddenly withdrawn, began torturing my brains on the instant to think of a subject. As it happened, my attention was caught by hearing two gentlemen close to me discuss a beautiful sketch by Copley Fielding, if I recollect rightly, which hung on the wall--a wild waste of tidal sands, with here and there a line of stake-nets fluttering in the wind--a grey shroud of rain sweeping up from the westward, through which low red cliffs glowed dimly in the rays of the setting sun--a train of horses and cattle splashing slowly through shallow desolate pools and creeks, their wet, red, and black hides glittering in one long line of level light.