orrow. Those whom we have ever seen radiant in health, in liveliness,
in joy--so full of buoyancy and hope, they seem as if formed for
sunshine alone, as if they could not live in the darkening clouds of woe
or care; whose pleasures have been pure and innocent as their own bright
beauty; who are as yet unknown to the whispering of inwardly working
sin; full of love and gentleness, and sympathy, ever ready to weep for
others, though for themselves tears are unknown; creatures, whose warm
enthusiastic feelings bind them to every heart capable of generous
emotions; those in whom we see life most beautified, most glad. Oh, it
is so sad to see them weep; to feel that even on them sorrow hath cast
its blight, and paled the cheek, and dimmed the laughing eye, the
speaking smile, and the first grief in such as these is agony indeed:
it is the breaking asunder of every former joy. They shrink from
retrospection, for they cannot bear to feel they are not now as then,
and the future shares to them the blackened shadows of the hopeless
present. As susceptible as they are to pleasure so are they to pain; and
raised far above others in the enjoyment of the one, so is their grief
doubled in comparison with those of more happy, because more even
temperaments. So it was with Emmeline; and her mother felt all this as
she stood beside her, watching with tearful sympathy the first real
grief of her darling child. Emmeline had cast herself on her knees
beside her couch; she had buried her face in her hands, while the sobs
that burst incessantly from her swelling bosom shook her frail figure
convulsively; the blue veins in her throat had swelled as if in
suffocation, and her fair hair, loosened from its confinement by her
agitation, hung wildly around her.

"Emmeline," Mrs. Hamilton said, gently and falteringly, but her child
heard her not, and she twined her arm around her, and tried to draw her
towards her.

"My own darling Emmeline, speak to me; I cannot bear to see you thus.
Look up, love; for my sake calm this excited feeling."

"May I not even weep? Would you deny me that poor comfort?" burst almost
passionately from the lips of Emmeline, for every faculty was bewildered
in that suddenly-excited woe. She looked up; her eyes were bloodshot and
haggard, her cheek flushed, and the veins drawn like cords across her
brow.

"Weep: would your mother forbid you that blessed comfort and relief, my
Emmeline? Could you indeed accuse me of suc