the heartbreaking woe, or the untimely death of Edwin. From Edwin
therefore the language of love would have created no disgust. Imogen was
not heedless and indiscreet; she would not have sacrificed the dignity
of innocence. Imogen was not coy; she would not have treated her admirer
with affected disdain. She had no guard but virgin modesty and that
conscious worth, _that would be wooed, and not unsought be won_.

Such was the yet immature attachment of our two lovers, when an
anniversary of religious mirth summoned them, together with their
neighbour shepherds of the adjacent hamlet, to the spot which had long
been consecrated to rural sports and guiltless festivity, near the
village of Ruthyn. The sun shone with unusual splendour; the Druidical
temples, composed of immense and shapeless stones, heaped upon each
other by a power stupendous and incomprehensible, reflected back his
radiant beams. The glade, the place of destination to the frolic
shepherds, was shrouded beneath two venerable groves that encircled it
on either side. The eye could not pierce beyond them, and the
imagination was in a manner embosomed in the vale. There were the
quivering alder, the upright fir, and the venerable oak crowned with
sacred mistletoe. They grew upon a natural declivity that descended
every way towards the plain. The deep green of the larger trees was
fringed towards the bottom with the pleasing paleness of the willow.
From one of the groves a little rivulet glided across the plain, and was
intersected on one side by a stream that flowed into it from a point
equally distant from either extremity of its course. Both these streams
were bordered with willows. In a word, upon the face of this beautiful
spot all appeared tranquility and peace. It was without a path, and you
would imagine that no human footsteps had ever invaded the calmness of
its solitude. It was the eternal retreat of the venerable anchorite; it
was the uninhabited paradise in the midst of the trackless ocean.