Page:The Wanderer (1814 Volume 1).pdf/133

 "If I think you better than handsome, Elinor&mdash;&mdash;"

"Pho! you know there is no such better in nature; at least not in such nature as forms taste in the mind of man; which I certainly do not consider as the purest of its works; though you all hold it, yourselves, to be the noblest. Nevertheless, imagination is all-powerful; if, therefore, you have taken the twist to believe in such sublimity, you may, perhaps, be seriously persuaded, that your heart would have been more stubborn to this dainty new Wanderer, than to your own walnut-skinned gypsey."

"Walnut-skinned?"

"Even so, noble knight-errand, even so! This person whom you now behold, and whom, if we believe our eyes, never met them till within this half hour, if we give credit to our ears, scrambled over with us in that crazy boat from France."

Harleigh was here summoned to Mrs. Maple, and Elinor returned to her inter-