bright, yet sad, on the ripening red
currants trained over the trellis, and on the fair monthly roses
entwined between, and through them fell chequered on Caroline sitting in
her white summer dress, still as a garden statue. There she read old
books, taken from her uncle's library. The Greek and Latin were of no
use to her, and its collection of light literature was chiefly contained
on a shelf which had belonged to her aunt Mary--some venerable Lady's
Magazines, that had once performed a sea-voyage with their owner, and
undergone a storm, and whose pages were stained with salt water; some
mad Methodist Magazines, full of miracles and apparitions, of
preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticism; the
equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the Dead to the Living;
a few old English classics. From these faded flowers Caroline had in her
childhood extracted the honey; they were tasteless to her now. By way of
change, and also of doing good, she would sew--make garments for the
poor, according to good Miss Ainley's direction. Sometimes, as she felt
and saw her tears fall slowly on her work, she would wonder how the
excellent woman who had cut it out and arranged it for her managed to be
so equably serene in _her_ solitude.

"I never find Miss Ainley oppressed with despondency or lost in grief,"
she thought; "yet her cottage is a still, dim little place, and she is
without a bright hope or near friend in the world. I remember, though,
she told me once she had tutored her thoughts to tend upwards to heaven.
She allowed there was, and ever had been, little enjoyment in this world
for her, and she looks, I suppose, to the bliss of the world to come. So
do nuns, with their close cell, their iron lamp, their robe strait as a
shroud, their bed narrow as a coffin. She says often she has no fear of
death--no dread of the grave; no more, doubtless, had St. Simeon
Stylites, lifted up terrible on his wild column in the wilderness; no
more has the Hindu votary stretched on his couch of iron spikes. Both
these having violated nature, their natural likings and antipathies are
reversed; they grow altogether morbid. I do fear death as yet, but I
believe it is because I am young. Poor Miss Ainley would cling closer to
life if life had more charms for her. God surely did not create us and
cause us to live with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe
in my heart we were intended to prize life and enjoy it so l