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Untitled Article
* A , naora beautiful description has seldom been written than that of Mary , as she sat by her sleeping sister the same night ; her thoughts wandering back to the days when she taught her " to lift
hear rosy finger at the blackbird ' s song / ' and to the time when the little motherless child clung to her for protection ; and then coivtemplating her exquisite beauty , the smooth brow , the long lashes and flushed cheek , experienced depths of emotion , which seem to compress years into the lapse of an hour , arid to change youth
into age . " Stooping down she kissed her gently , and smoothed her pillow , and arranged , the wandering tresses of her hair , while tears of unutterable tenderness Jmrst from her eyes , and she sighed as if the last struggle Qf ear ing- nature was about to set her free for ever from the bonds of earthly suffering" . " ^ 1 had but one treasure in the world , and thou hast reft it from me / said she . ' But I murmur not ; the young affections have been fondly cherished ; thou couldst not live alone and be contented ; thou couldst not
suffer and be still like me . —Vol . ii ., p . 7 . It is scarcely necessary to add that no human ear ever heard what she had felt ; that she sought and obtained her father ' s con * - aeot to the marriage ; and that , as a sister , she was as true and devoted as she would have been as a wife . We have said that
Mary disappoints us towards the close of the story . It is not in pature that she should become a " sensible woman , " " full of wise saws and modern instances , " and one of whom it could ever be said ( and as we cannot help feeling * justly said ) by poor Harriet in her affliction , " All this would be very well from the pulpit , but it does not apply to my case . " She was too sensitive ,
her sympathies were too perpetually awake ever to have allowed fen * r to become amenable to such a reproof . But Mias Stickney herself belongs to that class which calls itself " serious , " and which is termed " evangelic , " and she makes Mary's feelings merge in its exclusiveness . One moral of the story might
hav ^ turned on her fate . The " high stool without a back / ' the anxieties and cares , the deep sympathy , the disappointed hope , the suffering and self-denial , would have worked to a very certain result ; but not ( we think ) to that which Miss Stickney has conceived for her .
We are obliged , very unwillingly , to pass over the interesting * ftiul spirited sketch of Mr Malone : and to Kay much less of Harriet than we wish . The scene between her and her father just , before her marriage with the rich alderman , where , rising above the terrors of In 8 presence , she tells him she is about to marry without Jove , to escape from his intolerable thraldom , is one of the finest thing * in the book . The authoress has , in her case , cut the knot she was not able to untie , by killing the hus-
Untitled Article
400 Homey or , t k * Iron Rule .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1836, page 490, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2660/page/30/
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