Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/141

 "that if ever an evil spirit be allowed to enter our frail tenement, such spirit would have seemed to enter into Henrietta Marchmont." Well might this tragedy be prefaced with the solemn and prayer filled lines,— "God in thy mercy keep us with thy hand Dark are the thoughts that strive within the heart, When evil passions rise like sudden storms, Fearful and fierce! Let us not act those thoughts! Leave not our course to our unguided will,— Left to ourselves all crime is possible; And those who seemed the most removed from guilt Have sunk the deepest!"

Leaving this terrible page of human misery and guilt to make its own rightful impression, we have to do critically with Lady Marchmont's long-previous preparation of poison, and that, too, by a chemical process, requiring care and time, as though she were determined to be armed against some foreseen emergency. Now, neither Lady Marchmont's character nor circumstances were at the time such as to justify the introduction of such a strange procedure as her midnight task in her uncle's laboratory. True, in losing that uncle, she had lost the only friend who could sympathize with her feelings; granted, that she was not happy in her marriage, owing to her husband's equal deficiency of head and heart; but then her own character was a genial one, her spirits were buoyant, and she found ample amusement in general society; her evils were rather negative than positive; we consider her rather as not happy, than as absolutely miserable. Her strongest feelings yet slumbered in the depths of her heart, yet unawakened by her after guilty attachment to Sir George Kingston, and by the unrelenting injustice of her husband after her expressed repentance.