Page:Female Portrait Gallery.pdf/8

84 the general, and the picturesque. "Flora Mac Ivor" has those qualities which we all like to believe belong to human nature; the ideal is but the realization, in a palpable form, of our noblest emotions, of our highest aspirations. Generous and high-spirited as she is, Flora never goes beyond what we wish, and what we feel, a woman might be. Generally speaking, the female character is developed through the medium of affection—till she loves, she has rarely felt, consequently rarely thought much—for thoughts are but the representatives of past feelings—it is the heart that awakens the mind in woman. But Flora Mac Ivor is among the exceptions to this rule. I believe that the imaginative, and the highly-gifted, are the least susceptible; when they do love, it is with the depth and the energy to which themselves give strength; but the imagination rarely at first seeks an object where it must depend; it likes to feel its freedom, and its earliest pursuit is usually unselfish and abstract. Flora's imagination has an object in its loyalty—and her affection in her brother. If there be one tie on earth, dear even as love, it is that which unites an only brother and sister, left together orphans in their childhood. If "heaven lies around us in our infancy," there is something sacred in the love—an instinct with that earliest time. It grows with our growth, and strengthens with our strength;