"She was not brown, nor dull of hue,
But white as snowe, fallen newe."
All these are symbols, which, if you cannot read, the image is to you only an uninteresting stiff figure. But Sir Walter's Franchise, Diana Vernon, interests you at once in personal aspect and character. She is no symbol to you; but if you acquaint yourself with her perfectly, you find her utter frankness, governed by a superb self-command; her spotless truth, refined by tenderness; her fiery enthusiasm, subdued by dignity; and her fearless liberty, incapable of doing wrong, joining to fulfil to you, in sight and presence, what the Greek could only teach by signs.
213. I have before noticed—-though I am not sure that you have yet believed my statement of it—the significance of Sir Walter's as of Shakspeare's names; Diana 'Vernon, semper viret,' gives you the conditions of purity and youthful strength or spring which imply the highest state of libertas. By corruption of the idea of purity, you get the modern heroines of London Journal—or perhaps we may more fitly call it 'Cockney-daily'—literature. You have one of them in perfection, for instance, in
