not recollect. But death was then scarcely intelligible to me, and I
could not so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad perplexity. There
was another death in the house about the same time, viz. of a maternal
grandmother; but as she had in a manner come to us for the express purpose
of dying in her daughter's society, and from illness had lived perfectly
secluded, our nursery party knew her but little, and were certainly more
affected by the death (which I witnessed) of a favourite bird, viz. a
kingfisher who had been injured by an accident. With my sister Jane's
death [though otherwise, as I have said, less sorrowful than
unintelligible] there was, however, connected an incident which made a
most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my tendencies to
thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond what would seem credible for my
years. If there was one thing in this world from which, more than from any
other, nature had forced me to revolt, it was brutality and violence. Now
a whisper arose in the family, that a woman-servant, who by accident was
drawn off from her proper duties to attend my sister Jane for a day or
two, had on one occasion treated her harshly, if not brutally; and as this
ill treatment happened within two days of her death--so that the occasion
of it must have been some fretfulness in the poor child caused by her
sufferings--naturally there was a sense of awe diffused through the
family. I believe the story never reached my mother, and possibly it was
exaggerated; but upon me the effect was terrific. I did not often see the
person charged with this cruelty; but, when I did, my eyes sought the
ground; nor could I have borne to look her in the face--not through anger;
and as to vindictive thoughts, how could these lodge in a powerless
infant? The feeling which fell upon me was a shuddering awe, as upon a
first glimpse of the truth that I was in a world of evil and strife.
Though born in a large town, I had passed the whole of my childhood,
except for the few earliest weeks, in a rural seclusion. With three
innocent little sisters for playmates, sleeping always amongst them, and
shut up for ever in a silent garden from all knowledge of poverty, or
oppression, or outrage, I had not suspected until this moment the true
complexion of the world in which myself and my sisters were living.
Henceforward the character of my thoughts must have changed greatly; for
so _representative_ are some acts, that one single c