On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    couUcBot look upon it without loathing / and my heart became , full of evil thoughts . From that moment , another change passed over my spirit- ^ -I was no longer all love ; I did not love Mary as I loved her before she had given birth to this thing , and yet still I loved her . very dearly . It was only when she had the infant in her arms that I looked upon , her with altered feelings ; and then—oh ! it troubled me to see how Mary lavished her affection and her caresses upon this hideous little lump of deformity just as though it had been a beautiful babe . "

    This conflict of feeling endured till after the birth of two more children , each as lovely as the first had been deformed ; the affection of the mother still clinging with doating fondness upon the eldest , until the demons of hatred and suspicion took possession of the soul of Anstruther—hatred of his unfortunate child , and suspicion that his wife ' s fondness was but a form of contradiction and malevolence towards himself . At

    length the crisis arrived : — u day—one dreadful day—now at length I have come to the crisis of my history— -the merciless demon was at work in my bosom . I was in one of my most turbulent moods , when Mary entered my study with her favourite deformity—^ my study , where it had never been before , where I had peremptorily forbidden it to be brought . She came there , with

    a book in her Jiand , to show me the marvellous progress that the child had made in his studies . She came to taunt me , as I thought , with the moral worth and the intellectual beauty of the little monster , and to upbraid me for setting up matter above mind—for thinking more of the shell than of the kernel . She did say something about this ; but there was exceeding mildness in the words that she employed , and exceeding gentleness in the tones which uttered them . But they were enough to latfh my spirit into a whirlpool of passionate excitement . Never before had

    the exacerbation of my feelings been intense as they were at that moment . I scarcely knew what I did—I was insane—I uttered a terrific imprecation , dashed the book that I had been reading to the ground , struck the child witJjvthe palm of my hand on the face so violently that he howled with anguish , and then thrust the mother and her deformed favourite with frantic energy out of my chamber . " "

    This terrible scene was followed by his wife leaving him , taJking with her all their children , aqd his becoming the victim of remorse and misery ; for she was shipwrecked in crossing the : channel , and they never met again . To deal with the

    remorse of such a man , a spirit of high and universal religion is waiting—a Christian philosophy—and this we miss in the b 6 b \ £ ; but the story of Anstrutheir'iri powerfully told , ajnd contains elements which might be worked into a whole history . > ^ Oiir limits will not permit us to notice several original and w ^ fl-ijrawn ' characters , besides . those we , have mentioned . Atnbngthese old Mr Dpveton . is prominent ; he is extremely well supported throughout .

    Untitled Article

    2 SM& Doveton ; © r , the fflaritfikiany Impulses .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 1, 1837, page 296, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1831/page/41/