flowers; thickets, which being lined with most pleasant shade, were
witnessed so too, by the cheerfull disposition of manie well tuned
birds: each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober securitie,
while the prettie lambes with bleating oratorie craved the dammes
comfort: here a shepheards boy piping, as though he should never be
old: there a young shepheardesse knitting, and withall singing, and
it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to worke, and her
hands kept time to her voice's musick. As for the houses of the
country, (for manie houses came under their eye,) they were all
scattered, no two being one by th' other, and yet not so farre off
as that it barred mutuall succour: a shew, as it were, of an
accompanable solitarinesse, and of a civill wildeness.

Amid such scenes dwell Basilius and his wife, whose two daughters are
described by Sidney in language unsurpassed for delicacy and charm.

Of these two are brought to the world two daughters, so beyond
measure excellent in all the gifts allotted to reasonable
creatures, that we may thinke they were borne to shew, that nature
is no stepmother to that sexe, how much so ever some men (sharp
witted onely in evill speaking) have sought to disgrace them. The
elder is named Pamela, by many men not deemed inferiour to her
sister: for my part, when I marked them both, me thought there was,
(if at least such perfections may receive the word of more,) more
sweetness in Philoclea, but more majestie in Pamela: mee thought
love plaied in Philoclea's eies, & threatened in Pamela's; me
thought Philoclea's beautie only perswaded, but so perswaded that
all hearts must yield; Pamela's beautie used violence, and such
violence as no heart could resist. And it seems that such
proportion is betweene their mindes; Philoclea so bashfull, as