a little Tree

'Her Hair, which was whiter, and more shining than silver, and hung down in Tresses below her Waste, was only kept from falling o'er her Face by a Fillet of Diamonds. . . . On the Middle of the Fillet there was fix'd a sort of a little Tree of Gold, on the Branches of which hung Jewels of a prodigious largeness, but such a Height above her head that (the Springs on which they were fastn'd being shaded by some loose Hair, which flew out as tho' disdainful of Restraint) made it seem to the Eye as tho' they were self-poiz'd, and form'd Constellation like Ariadne's Crown.'

'Eliza Haywood (1693'-1756), from Idalia: or, the Unfortunate Mistress, 1725. As quoted by Cynthia Sundberg Wall in The Prose of Things: Transformations of Description in the Eighteenth Century, 2006.