There was one young girl, called Julie, who was cruel enough to have
depopulated a whole nation of lovers. She was the most beautiful
creature, it is said, that ever skimmed the surface of this breathing
world. Her light brown hair was illumined in the bends of the curls with
gleams resembling those of auburn, and it was so long and luxuriant,
that when, in the ardour of the chase, it became unbound, and floated in
clouds around her, that seemed just touched on their golden summits by
the sun, she looked more like a thing of air than of earth.

Nor was the illusion dissipated when, flinging away with her white
arm the redundant tresses, her face flashed upon the gazer. There
was nothing in it of that tinge of earth--for there is no word for
the thought--which identifies the loveliest and happiest faces with
mortality. There was no shade of care upon her dazzling brow--no touch
of tender thought upon her lip--no flash, even of hope, in her radiant
eyes. Her expression spoke neither of the past nor the future--neither
of graves nor altars. She was a thing of mere physical life--a gay and
glorious creature of the sun, and the wind, and the dews; who exchanged
as carelessly and unconsciously as a flower, the sweet smell of her
beauty for the bounties of nature, and pierced the ear of heaven with
her mirthful songs, from nothing higher than the instinct of a bird.

It seemed as if what was absent in her mind had been added to her
physical nature. She had the same excess of animal life which is
observed in young children; but, unlike them, her muscular force was
great enough to give it play. Her walk was like a bounding dance, and
her common speech like a gay and sparkling song;--her laugh echoed
from hill to hill, like the tone of some sweet, but wild and shrill
instrument of music. She out-stripped the boldest of the youths in the