I know what you will say: “This is a sketch in Rachel Cowley’s style, when compassion guides her pencil. It is a thousand to one that this poor girl is any thing more than a pretty one; her youth and depressed fortune have lent their aid to an imagination that always employs vivid colours. We must place Miss Howard’s picture by the side of Miss Flint’s.” Do so, Lucy; the time may come, and I hope will come, when you shall recant, and the triumph of truth shall be that of your
Without entering into your comments on the power of bribery when in such hands as mine, I will content myself with my influence over an affection which can be just to friendship and yet faithful to duty. I appeal to your understanding, Lucy; has there been one wish to render your good offices hurtful to your father, or pernicious to Horace and myself, yet offered to ensnare you? I have a right to hear of his welfare; and by detailing the little occurrences which mark our respective existences, you are doing no harm. Your conditions are accepted with joy, as the means of producing comfort to my _brother_. You shall have my day-journals, and night-journals, if you will; my very dreams shall be sent you. Ah! would to Heaven you could give me Horace’s!
To begin, however, with your “_method_.” My first night’s repose at Tarefield was disturbed by Mary Howard’s image and my own fretfulness. The dawn of day presented to my sight Solomon, in his judgment-seat, who grinned upon me with an aspect not less savage than that of the two viragoes who held the sprawling boy between them; for, sooth to say, no one could have traced the mother’s features, or the clemency of the judge in the mass of worsted employed; and I believe the face of the lions that decorated the ascent to the throne, was the common one for the whole multitude of countenances that filled the room. Weary of looking at this odious tapestry, I arose, and explored my way into the garden. Here, indeed, I found the sweet perfumes of nature and the god of day; but for the rest let the poet speak—
“Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other; The suffering eye inverted Nature sees, Trees cut as statues, statues cut as trees.”