Page:Romance & Reality 1.pdf/267

Rh —touching the truth, we are not quite so certain: but poets often mistake, and philosophers still oftener. Emily's own feelings coloured all with themselves. Generally speaking, she rather wanted animation: what are called high spirits are quite as much habitual as constitutional. Living with people much older than herself—an aunt never much put out of her way by any thing—and an uncle, whose stately courtesy of the old school was tinctured by a native timidity which age itself never entirely conquers—she had not been accustomed to give way to those impulses of a moment's gaiety which break forth in gay laugh and bounding step. Or is there a prophetic spirit in the human mind, which makes those of the keenest feelings often appear cold; an intuitive, though unowned, fear, repressing sensations of such deep and intense power? They can not feel only a little; and they shrink, though with an unconscious dread, from feeling too much. But to-day Emily's gaiety took its tone from the bright sunshine. Both herself and Edward in that gay mood which makes its own enjoyment, and enjoys every thing: they were soon on the beautiful common leading to Roehampton, where villas, which seem, like