Page:Female Portrait Gallery.pdf/100

176 actual instance of affection lightening adversity, and shedding its own sweetness over the sorrow which it could at least share. Alice Lee is among the most lovable of Scott's feminine creations. No writer possessed to a greater degree, that faculty which Coleridge so prettily describes in one line— And every appearance of Alice Lee is a picture. We see her first in the shadowy twilight, the light step of youth subdued to the heavier tread of age; and in the dialogue that follows, with what force, and yet what delicacy, we are made acquainted with the innermost recesses of the maiden's heart! Alice is at the most interesting period of a woman's existence—when the character is gradually forming under circumstances that develop all the latent qualities. The rose has opened to the summer—the girl has suddenly become a woman.

Alice Lee's predominate feeling is attachment to her father: her love for her cousin is a gentle and quiet love; it belongs to the ease and familiarity of childhood; it is constantly subdued by a rival and holier sentiment. Alice's devotion to her father is not merely the fulfilment of a duty, it is a warmer and keener emotion—there is pity and enthusiasm blended with her filial piety—she sees the kind-hearted old man bowed by adversity, mortified in all those innocent vanities which sit