Page:Lady Anne Granard 3.pdf/245

Rh Lady Anne, the deposit she had spoken of, though it was with great difficulty that her feeble, trembling hands turned the key of her writing-desk, and sought out the drawer which contained the treasured casket. It is the most deplorable of all spectacles humanity can exhibit, when the body has survived the mind, when health and strength remain though intelligence has departed, and reason and memory die, while life continues. To see that god-like creature who was made "but a little lower than the angels," apparently cast down beneath the level of the brutes (as in derangement or paralysis), is that which we justly deprecate more than all other afflictions; but it is also an awful and affecting sight, when the mind evidently is too strong for the body, and is ever compelling the fragile clay which enshrines it beyond its powers. It is an appalling thing to see the immortal spark illumining the already half-perished, half-existent partner of its long career, urging it beyond the powers of its nature, and apparently continuing to tenant its earthly tabernacle, in defiance of the laws which govern it. That this was the case with Lady Anne for some weeks, was the impression of all