Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/412

Rh In such moods it might be, as the author says, more interesting and practical to paint Ninian Græme dropping womanly tears, and exhausted with overwrought sentiment. But instep of that—instead of analysing his emotional susceptibilities (whatever he felt, Heaven knoweth! and Heaven is merciful, tender, and dumb)—-he makes him "go home and work;" for work, in her healthy creed, is the iron ploughshare that goes over the field of the heart, rooting up all the pretty grasses, and the beautiful, hurtful weeds that we have taken such pleasure in growing, laying them all under, fair and foul together—making plain, dull-looking arable land for our neighbours to peer at; until at night-time, down in the deep furrows the angels come and sow. Ninian's sister, Lindsay, is a subdued and less impassioned, less energetic counterpart of himself; "just a woman, nothing less and nothing more." A shadow—the chill shadow of a beloved and betrothed one's death—has swept over her, but has left no bitterness, no heartlessness, scarcely even grief—content, perhaps, with sealing up all her youth's restless emotions into one serene repose. Never has she been, or been thought, clever or beautiful; and she has now passed the age of caring to be thought either. All the household love her dearly, and call her "Our Sister," and say, "Poor dear Sister Lindsay!—even if she does go clucking after us wild young chickens, like an old grey hen, she keeps us warm under her wings." Of the rest of the circle, the twins, Esther and Ruth, are "sonsie lassies," of that ordinary type to which belongs a large class of men and women, who, as our author words it, live a contented, harmless life, help to people the earth, and then leave their quiet dust in its bosom, having done all they can, and no more: "perhaps these are the happiest people of all, in this world at least!" Edmund is the poet-brother, sensitive and too susceptible—a votary of that wild poetry of passion and emotion so attractive in early life, "of which every young Rasselas tries to make himself wings to soar out of the Happy Valley of childhood into manhood's stormy world." The other two—Reuben, a somewhat gruff and forbidding youngster, an unlicked cub, who cultivates mathematics, and forswears the Graces,—and Charlie, a restless predestined child of Ocean,—are very subordinate young gentlemen. Christina, or Tinie, the "youngest princess" of the family, and a creature beautiful and blythe as youngest princesses always happen to be," has yet failed, we regret to own, to fascinate us: in fact, we think Miss Tinie a failure, whose quips and quirks and wanton wiles are dull and laboured, whose coquettishness wants natural abandon, and whose wit is neither fresh nor fair, simple nor winsome, seasonable nor well-seasoned. Then comes another member of the group at "The Gowans"—little Hope Ansted—at first so shy, precise, and commonplace, but afterward budding out with beauty and excellence—a poor frozen plant, which the genial atmosphere of "The Gowans" wakes up to fragrant life—a gentle presence, who charms all by a certain combination of childish simplicity and womanly repose, and whose unobtrusive, unpretending womanhood excites so deep a love in the heart of Ninian; just as we often see, it is remarked, a man of high genius or intellectual power pass by the De Staëls and the Corinnes, to take into his bosom some wayside flower, who has nothing on earth to make her worthy of him, except that she is, what so few of your "female celebrities" are—a true woman. Then again, we have the tragedy-queen