Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/93



"Both had strong feelings, poetical imaginations, and both had lived much in solitude; but Emily's feelings had been left to her imagination, and her solitude had been that of reverie and idleness. Beatrice's feelings, on the contrary, had been early taught the necessity of restraint; her imagination, curbed by action, had only been allowed to colour, not create circumstances; and her solitude had been one of constant and useful employment. Both had much mental cultivation; but Emily's was accomplishment, Beatrice's was information. The one dreamed, the other thought; the one, only accustomed to feel, acted from impulse; the other, forced to reflect, soon formed for herself a standard of principle. Emily was governed by others, Beatrice relied on herself. Emily loved Lorraine as the first idol which her feelings had set up, an almost ideal object; Beatrice loved him from a high sense of appreciation. The English girl would have died beneath the first danger that threatened her lover; the Spaniard would have stood the very worst by his side." Again, Beatrice is represented with another source of strength; her spirit, firm as it was, yet was early broken by sorrow: what then supported her mind? when, her father in prison, she was left amid circumstances of privation and danger to watch over her mother, whom misery had rendered hopelessly insane, her consolation was derived from a little English Bible, which had become the chief companion and solace of her lonely hours. "There are some works of God, which most especially seem the work of His hands; and some ills of humanity, which seem most of all to ask aid from above. The mighty gathering of the storms on her native mountains, the thunder that shook the earth, and the lightning that in an hour laid bare