the same time, firm, enduring, and
fall of energy, she combined the characteristic qualities of both her
parents, and added to them an originality all her own. Her education,
in the common acceptation of the term, had necessarily been both
desultory and imperfect; and yet, under its influence, the mind and
character of Edith had strengthened and matured in no common degree.
The very circumstances by which she was surrounded had educated her;
and sorrow--deep, abiding sorrow, for the loss of both her much-loved
brothers--had taught her to look on life in a different point of view,
and with different expectations from those with which it is usually
regarded by the young. Her mother had watched her opening mind and
disposition with much care and anxiety: but she had not sought to check
its interesting peculiarity, or to control the wild exuberance of
thought and feeling that were occasionally manifested by her
intelligent and engaging child. As she grew older, she became more and
more the companion of Helen, who studied her character attentively:
and, if we be allowed such a figure of speech, wisely endeavored to
train it in a right direction, rather than to prune it to any
conventional form. Thus a perfect confidence was established, and ever
subsisted between the mother and daughter; and the natural
thoughtfulness of spirit, and energy of purpose, that belonged to Edith,
were unchecked, and she was allowed to possess an individuality of
character that is, unhappily, too often repressed and destroyed in these
present days of high civilization and uniformity of education.

The courteous manners which both Helen and her husband had acquired in
early life--when they dwelt in comparative affluence in England--were
inherited by their daughter in full measure; and her whole manner and
conduct were marked by a refinement and elegance that seemed little in
keeping with the life of extreme simplicity, and even of hardship, that
she had experienced from her early childhood. While her brothers were
spared to her, she was their constant companion and playfellow; and
except when her mother required her attendance, either as her pupil or
her assistant in domestic occupations, she spent the greatest part of
the day in rambling with them on the sea-shore, or through the adjacent
woods, or else in the active and tasteful cultivation of their garden.
And when successive calamities deprived her of these cherished objects
of her early affe