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Rh But her spirit was firm as gentle. She had been from childhood less her grandfather's favourite than her cousin, and from the very earliest age all the household cares had fallen to her share. Thus, habits of thought and activity were forced upon her; she soon acquired that self-reliance which exertion ever brings; and at the age of seventeen she united a sweet seriousness, a mild energy, with all the guileless simplicity of youth.

Impassioned and imaginative, living in an ideal world, little broken in upon by the small sacrifices of daily life, Guido was far less fitted for the ordinary struggle of existence; he possessed genius in the highest sense of the word—inherent, spiritual, and creative. In hand, heart, and mind, he was alike a poet. But, alas! those who are heirs of the future, destined to fill the earth with the immortal and the beautiful, what is their share in the present? the sad and the weary path—the bowed-down and broken heart! Look at the golden list of the few who have left behind them the bright picture, the god-like statue, the inspired scroll, to whom we yet owe—ay, and now pay our debt of gratitude—what was each life but a long and terrible sacrifice to futurity? But the young look to the goal, not to the road;