sometimes, a bird busy in quest of its nest at the approach of night, was so silently winging its airy way beneath the firmament. After gently waving the mangoe-grove and touching the waters of the Amodara, the cool, grateful summer breeze was playing with the ringlets of Tilottama's hair, or with the cloth which fell so gracefully over her shoulders. Tilottama was a beauty, and how do I wish to hold up to the gaze of the gentle reader her matchless perfections! But O vain wish! Courteous reader, have you ever in your 'young days' seen, with a lover's eye, the fresh-budding loveliness of a calm, gentle, soft maiden, whose dear image has stamped itself indelibly on your memory and imagination—whose sylph-like form keeps aye gliding in and out as if in a dream—in your youth, manhood and old age; in your busy moments and in your repose; alike when you sleep and when you wake; yet which for all this, leaves not a tinge of impurity behind it—have you, gentle reader, seen such a maiden? If you have, then only you will be able to conceive what Tilottama was like. That form which illuminates our mental darkness, through the profusion of its radiant charms—that form which through the perfection of its arch playfulness plants its poisonous tooth into our heart, our heroine had not. Hers was that form which through its deliciously soft graces, instills the dew of gladness into the mind—that form which keeps so gently waving in the imagination like a shrub lightly stirred by the breath of the vernal evening breeze.
Tilottama was sixteen; her body had not yet therefore received the full development of grown women; nay, there was still visible a tinge of girlishness in her form and features. The well-arched forehead, not narrow, yet not too expansive either, was like a moonlit stream, expressive of perfect quiescence. The raven-
