50 THE ELFIN EXILE. 



breeze he was soon beyond the reach of conjugal anger. The 

 gentle Mimosa, conscious of her innocence, but outraged and 

 degraded by the insolence of the king, appeared with down- 

 cast eyes before her enraged mistress. All the gossips of the 

 fairy court gathered round her to witness her disgrace, and they 

 who would have given their crowns to win one kiss from their 

 monarch, now turned up their eyes in holy horror, and fluttered 

 their wings with virtuous indignation. The end of the matter 

 was, that Mimosa was tried and convicted of lese majeste ; but 

 the queen, who now affected magnanimity, commuted the 

 punishment of banishment into imprisonment for three moons 

 in the green-leaf of a primrose, which the skill of the mason- 

 caterpillar soon converted into a prison house. 



It may be that Titania would have relented when she recov- 

 ered from her fit of ill humor, but, unhappily, she was deprived 

 of the opportunity of showing mercy, by a strange freak of hu- 

 man affection. There was a certain young and lovely lady, 

 who had wedded the object of her heart's best love, and now, 

 forsaking parents, and friends, and country, she was about to 

 embark on the broad sea, to find a new home in the wilds of 

 America. But with that caprice of human will, which, while it 

 makes great sacrifices, yet pines over small wants, she who had 

 willingly resigned all the blessings of kindred, now sought to 

 bear with her to a strange land some blossoms from the soil 

 which her infant feet had trod. A sister's care, therefore, sought 

 out a clump of English primroses, and placing them, together 

 with the earth to which they clung, in a garden vase, she en- 

 closed them beneath a crystal canopy, to protect them from 



