Genius is less of the head than of the heart: not that we belong to the modern school who believe the passions are necessary to the developement of genius;—far from it. The purest affections seem to us to have left the most enduring monuments. Among a thousand others, at least with woman, we see in Madam De Sevignè that maternal love developed all the graces of a mind unconscious certainly of its powers, but destined to become immortal.
Our heroine, for such we must try to make her, had grown up free from all artificial forms of society, but yearning for associates of her own age and sex. After her father, her affections had found objects only in birds and animals, and the poor cottagers of one of the smallest parishes in the country.
Living, as she did, in the midst of beautiful nature, and with the grandeur of the ocean always before her, it could not fail to impart a spiritual beauty, a religious elevation, to her mind that had nothing to do with the technical distinctions of the day. Edith Grafton was formed for gentleness and love, to suffer patiently, to submit gracefully, to think more of others' than of her own happiness. She was the light and joy of her father's hearth, and the idol of her faithful slaves, and she possessed herself that "peace that goodness bosoms ever."
CHAPTER V.
"The mildest herald by our fate allotted
Beckons! and with inverted torch doth stand
To lead us, with a gentle hand,
Into the land of the departed,—into the silent land.
Ah, when the frame round which in love we cling,
Is chilled by death, does mutual service fail?
Is tender pity then of no avail?
Are intercessions of the fervent tongue
A waste of hope?"
Wordsworth.
The two slaves that completed the evening group had been brought into Mr. Grafton's family at the time of his marriage. Dinah was the most striking in personal appearance. She had been born a princess in her native land; and her erect and nobly-proportioned form had never been crushed by the feeling of abject slavery.