from a point of time when as yet it was neither feared
nor would even have been intelligible--the name that killed in 1843,
which in 1835 would have struck no vibration upon the heart--the
portrait that on the day of her Majesty's coronation would have been
admired by you with a pure disinterested admiration, but which if seen
to-day would draw forth an involuntary groan--cases such as these are
strangely moving for all who add deep thoughtfulness to deep
sensibility. As the hastiest of improvisations, accept--fair reader,
(for you it is that will chiefly feel such an invocation of the
past)--three or four illustrations from my own experience.

Who is this distinguished-looking young woman with her eyes drooping,
and the shadow of a dreadful shock yet fresh upon every feature? Who is
the elderly lady with her eyes flashing fire? Who is the downcast child
of sixteen? What is that torn paper lying at their feet? Who is the
writer? Whom does the paper concern? Ah! if she, if the central figure
in the group--twenty-two at the moment when she is revealed to
us--could, on her happy birth-day at sweet seventeen, have seen the
image of herself five years onwards, just as _we_ see it now, would she
have prayed for life as for an absolute blessing? or would she not have
prayed to be taken from the evil to come--to be taken away one evening
at least before this day's sun arose? It is true, she still wears a look
of gentle pride, and a relic of that noble smile which belongs to _her_
that suffers an injury which many times over she would have died sooner
than inflict. Womanly pride refuses itself before witnesses to the total
prostration of the blow; but, for all _that_, you may see that she longs
to be left alone, and that her tears will flow without restraint when
she is so. This room is her pretty boudoir, in which, till
to-night--poor thing!--she has been glad and happy. There stands her
miniature conservatory, and there expands her miniature library; as we
circumnavigators of literature are apt (you know) to regard all female
libraries in the light of miniatures. None of these will ever rekindle a
smile on _her_ face; and there, beyond, is her music, which only of all
that she possesses, will now become dearer to her than ever; but not, as
once, to feed a self-mocked pensiveness, or to cheat a half-visionary
sadness. She will be sad indeed. But she is one of those that will
suffer in silence. Nobody will ever detect _her_ faili