Page:A Voice from the Nile, and Other Poems. (Thomson, Dobell).djvu/25

 It tells the tale of his first meeting with his "Good Angel;" of his intense and overmastering affection for her; of her untimely death, and of his life-long misery and despair. Few words are needed to tell the story; but what a world of suffering is summed up in them!

This young girl was the daughter of the Armourer-Sergeant of a regiment in the Garrison. That she was a creature of uncommon loveliness, both of person and of mind, seems to be certain. She was described by Mrs. Barnes as resembling in character the Evangeline St. Clair of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I mention this rather unwillingly, for I confess that my feeling with regard to the authoress of that once popular novel is anything but one of respect. Yet it must be owned, I think, that in delineating Eva St. Clair she has well pourtrayed a character of peculiar charm and sweetness. Twenty years ago it would probably have been difficult to find a reader who was not well acquainted with "Uncle Tom's Cabin;" but its popularity has so much declined of late years, that it is likely enough that Eva St. Clair is a name only to the great majority of the present generation. It seems worth while therefore to quote a short passage from the novel, in which her appearance and character are described:—

"Her form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usual chubbiness and squareness of outline. There was about it an undulating and aërial grace, such as one might dream of for some mythic and allegorical being. Her face was remarkable, less for its perfect beauty of feature, than for a singular and dreamy earnestness of expression, which made the ideal start