Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/196

192 she continued to pursue, as opportunity was granted her, throughout the remainder of life.

At the age of fourteen, she left school, and became the companion of her parents. Her time was happily divided between a cheerful participation with her mother, in those cares which promote domestic comfort, an earnest interest in such books as pleased her father, and that enjoyment of those beauties of nature, for which the romantic scenery of her native place furnished continual aliment. The virtues of a friend, as well as a daughter, were even at this early period of life strongly developed, and beautiful.

The poetic temperament was discerned almost in infancy, by her shrinking delicacy of feeling, and favorite themes of contemplation. This, like her other departments of intellect, was marked by precocity. An effusion of hers, written at the age of nine years, on a beautiful infant, was placed by a relative, without her knowledge, in the pages of a periodical. When she saw it there, she burst into tears, and was long deeply distressed. Her poems were not numerous, and frequently unfinished, but harmonious in their numbers, and in their subjects such as the affections dictated.

Her early youth passed without a cloud. Its first shadow was deep sympathy in the sorrows of an only sister, many years older than herself, the sudden death of whose husband, caused an entire reverse of fortune. From this participation in affliction, sprang forth a