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Untitled Article
was the shrewd remark of one more compounded of the mere common-place materials of humanity than those who love his spirit-stirring poetry are willing to helieve . To wound the vanity of a man like Lord Lentall , was to give him the most mortal of moral hurts—to soothe and stimulate his vanity was to fan the fire that fed his spirits , and such
happiness as he was capable of feeling . Shall we wonder , then , amid the conflict created by the supposed coldness of Clara and the supposed preference of her rival , that he saw nothing clearly , and , like a vessel broke from its moorings , was drifted by any current which might chance to prevail ?
The limits of a sketch admit not of that detail which best lays bare the anatomy of the human heart . In brief , Miss
Mountwell wiled or won Lord Lentall from Clara ; who , after having been called into temporary notice by the circumstances of his passion and Miss Mountwell ' s manoeuvres , was thrown back into more than her original state of obscurity and neglect ¦—thrown back with a bleeding heart ; for , unconscious of the escape she had experienced , she mourned the loss of her lover , and estimated him far beyond his worth . Thus we return to the moment when Clara cast herself on
the couch in Lady Msitehmd ' s dressing-room . With a cruel indifference to the feelings of the forsaken girl , or with a
malignant design to wound them , Miss Mountwell had spoken explicitly upon the subject of her approaching nuptials with Lord Lentall .
" Oh , my mother ! exclaimed Clara , when tears had relieved the suffocating sensation arisinir from the mingled emotions of resentment and grief , "Oh , my mother ! not thus had Edmund acted ! " and the parting words of the lover of * her girlhood
came back upon her memory , —they were , in fact , graven more deeply than she guessed upon 1 km * heart . Tt is in the hour of affliction that the heart rises unto God , and thus it is that the broken vessel of an arHicted spirit has been so often filled by the waters of devotion , which , unlike
all others , cement that which was shattered — restore * that which was ruined . Certain , too , it is , that in that hour the deep memories of the past arc prone to return to us—those images over which death and sorrow have placed bolts rusted by the tears of anguish , suddenly burst from their sepulchre , and breathe an indescribable charm upon the existing desolation .
Invents of a somewhat striking nature followed in rapid succession ; among these was the death of 1 iord LentaH ' s lather , — and his son , scarcely recovered from the intoxication produced by his succession to the lesser rank , vaulted into the dignity of sin earldom , as if it were not lent to him on lease us it had been to his predecessor , whose hatchment was thus vainly hung forth as a memorial of mortality .
Untitled Article
The Intriguante . 21
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1836, page 21, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2653/page/21/
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