Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 096.djvu/181

Rh till now so gay and high in its beatings, and she wanders up-stairs to her own room, and thinks it so dim, and cheerless, and cold, and hides her sad white face in the pillow, and silently weeps. "The girlish light heart sank down under its sudden burden, without another struggle. I am not strong,’ murmured little Alice, and there ts no one with me.'" A more beautiful sketch of gentle maidenly dependence one seldom meets withal. The character of the novel, however, is, or is meant to be, the Lady of the Tower, Mrs. Catherine Douglas. She belongs to the Scottish family, of which we have eminent types in the redoubtable presence of Mrs. Violet Shake, in one of Miss Ferrier's capital tales, and of Galt's Leddy Grippy, which, in Byron's opinion, was surpassed by no female character since the days of Shakspeare for truth, nature, and individuality. But Mrs. Catherine is their superior in the suaviter in modo, and yet their peeress in the fortiter in re; albeit, on the whole, there may be a lack of freshness and a slight air of effort about her. Still she commands respect and unstinted love. We see in her a high-minded and unselfish lady, whose strong will sways, and whose warm heart embraces alt within their influence—one whose healthful and vigorous spirit is rarely and beautifully softened by delicate perceptions and sympathies, and who holds absolute dominion, with strong but kindly hand, at the grey, old, stately tower, whose courtyard had rung to martial music in the days of the Stuarts, and beneath whose heavy, battlemented wall the brown waters of the Oran speed on their way. She is a Douglas, and retains the complexional peculiarities of the Black Earl of olden time. All honour to the grand-hearted matron—in her rich, rustling, silken garments of dark-grey, and that shawl of finest texture and simplest pattern, and that cap of old and costly lace; her unchanged attire for years and years! The members of her household are characteristically drawn: Elspeth Henderson, a subdued and domesticated Mause Headrigg, and her daughter, Euphan Morison—a very genius in doctoring (e.g., Mrs. Catherine's best cow in the death-thraw with her abominations)—and her daughter Jacky (scil. Jacobina), that strange, thin, angular girl with her dark, keen face, and eccentric motion, and singular language—charged to the full with fairy tales and enthusiasm—a very Ariel to do her mistress's spiriting—not the least mystery about her being the "reason why the spirit of a knight-errant, of as delicate honour, and heroic devotion, as aver adorned the brightest age of chivalry, should have been endued with this girl's elfin frame and humble place." Anne Ross, again—or "Gowan," as her patroness lovingly calls her—is a delightful being: a self-sacrificing, resolute, circumspect, yet most tender nature—rare union of intense affection and disciplined wisdom—worthy of the portrait-gallery of the "Two Old Men's Tales." And we must put in a good word for Marjory Falconer, who, in her most reckless freaks, escapes the stigma of vulgarity, and who blushes so unreservedly that we grant her plenary absolution for her use of the whip, and even for her transient adherence to the "Rights of Women" empiricism.