_Miranda._--Alack! what trouble
Was I then to you!
_Prospero._--O, a cherubim
Thou wast, that did preserve me!
THE TEMPEST.
Such was the Englishman who had taken refuge in the furthest wilds of an
almost untenanted portion of the globe. Like a Corinthian column, left
single amidst the ruder forms of the forest oaks, standing in alien
beauty, a type of civilization and the arts, among the rougher, though
perhaps not less valuable, growth of Nature's own. Refined to
fastidiousness, sensitive to morbidity, the stranger was respected
without being understood, and loved though the intimate of none.
Many circumstances have been mentioned as tending to reconcile Fitzhenry
to his lot; and yet one has been omitted, chiefest of all;--the growth
and development of his child was an inexhaustible source of delight and
occupation. She was scarcely three years old when her parent first came
to the Illinois. She was then a plaything and an object of solicitude to
him, and nothing more. Much as her father loved her, he had not then
learned to discover the germ of the soul just nascent in her infant
form; nor to watch the formation, gradual to imperceptibility, of her
childish ideas. He would watch over her as she slept, and gaze on her as
she sported in the garden, with ardent and unquiet fondness; and, from
time to time, instil some portion of knowledge into her opening mind:
but this was all done by snatches, and at intervals. His affection for
her was the passion of his soul; but her society was not an occupation
for his thoughts. He would have knelt to kiss her footsteps as she
bounded across the grass, and tears glistened in his eyes as she
embraced his knees on his return from any excursion; but her prattle
often wearied him, and her very presence was sometimes the source of
intense pain.
He did not know himself how much he loved her, till she became old
enough to share his excursions and be a companion. This occurred at a
far earlier age than would have been the case had she been in England,
living in a nursery with other children. There is a peculiarity in the
education of a daughter, brought up by a father only, which tends to
develop early a thousand of those portions of mind, which are folded up,
and often destroyed, under mere feminine tuition. He made her fearless,
by making her the associate of his rides; yet his incessant care and
watchfulness, the observant tenderness of his manner, almost reverential
on many points, springing from the differences of sex, tended to soften
her mind, and make her spirit ductile and dependent. He taught her to
scorn pain, but to shrink with excessive timidity from any thing that
intrenched on the barrier of womanly reserve which he raised about her.
Nothing was dreaded, indeed, by her, except his disapprobation; and a
word or look from him made her, with all her childish vivacity and
thoughtlessness, turn as with a silken string, and bend at once to his
will.
There was an affectionateness of disposition kneaded up in the very
texture of her soul, which gave it its "very form and pressure." It
accompanied every word and action; it revealed itself in her voice, and
hung like light over the expression of her countenance.
Her earliest feeling was love of her father. She would sit to watch him,
guess at his thoughts, and creep close, or recede away, as she read
encouragement, or the contrary, in his eyes and gestures. Except him,
her only companion was her servant; and very soon she distinguished
between them, and felt proud and elate when she quitted her for her
father's side. Soon, she almost never quitted it. Her gentle and docile
disposition rendered her unobtrusive, while her inexhaustible spirits
were a source of delightful amusement. The goodness of her heart
endeared her still more; and when it was called forth by any demand made
on it by him, it was attended by such a display of excessive
sensibility, as at once caused him to tremble for her future happiness,
and love her ten thousand times more. She grew into the image on which
his eye doated, and for whose presence his heart perpetually yearned.
Was he reading, or otherwise occupied, he was restless, if yet she were
not in the room; and she would remain in silence for hours, occupied by
some little feminine work, and all the while watching him, catching his
first glance towards her, and obeying the expression of his countenance,
before he could form his wish into words. When he left her for any of
his longer excursions, her little heart would heave, and almost burst
with sorrow. On his return, she was always on the watch to see, to fly
into his arms, and to load him with infantine caresses.
There was something in her face, that at this early age gave token of
truth and affection, and asked for sympathy. Her large brown eyes, such
as are called hazel, full of tenderness and sweetness, possessed within
their depths an expression and a latent fire, which stirred the heart.
It is difficult to describe, or by words to call before another's mind,
the picture so palpable to our own. The moulding of her cheek, full just
below the eyes, and ending in a soft oval, gave a peculiar expression,
at once beseeching and tender, and yet radiant with vivacity and
gladness. Frankness and truth were reflected on her brow, like flowers
in the clearest pool; the thousand nameless lines and mouldings, which
create expression, were replete with beaming innocence and irresistible
attraction. Her small chiselled nose, her mouth so delicately curved,
gave token of taste. In the whole was harmony, and the upper part of the
countenance seemed to reign over the lower and to ennoble it, making her
usual placid expression thoughtful and earnest; so that not until she
smiled and spoke, did the gaiety of her guileless heart display itself,
and the vivacity of her disposition give change and relief to the
picture. Her figure was light and airy, tall at an early age, and
slender. Her rides and rambles gave elasticity to her limbs, and her
step was like that of the antelope, springy and true. She had no fears,
no deceit, no untold thought within her. Her matchless sweetness of
temper prevented any cloud from ever dimming her pure loveliness: her
voice cheered the heart, and her laugh rang so true and joyous on the
ear, that it gave token in itself of the sympathizing and buoyant spirit
which was her great charm. Nothing with her centred in self; she was
always ready to give her soul away: to please her father was the
unsleeping law of all her actions, while his approbation imparted a
sense of such pure but entire happiness, that every other feeling faded
into insignificance in the comparison.
In the first year of exile and despair, Fitzhenry looked forward to the
long drawn succession of future years, with an impatience of woe
difficult to be borne. He was surprised to find, as he proceeded in the
quiet path of life which he had selected, that instead of an increase of
unhappiness, a thousand pleasures smiled around him. He had looked on it
as a bitter task to forget that he had a name and country, both
abandoned for ever; now, the thought of these seldom recurred to his
memory. His forest home became all in all to him. Wherever he went, his
child was by his side, to cheer and enliven him. When he looked on her,
and reflected that within her frame dwelt spotless innocence and filial
piety, that within that lovely "bower of flesh," not one thought or
feeling resided that was not akin to heaven in its purity and sweetness,
he, as by infection, acquired a portion of the calm enjoyment, which she
in her taintless youth naturally possessed.
Even when any distant excursion forced him to absent himself, her idea
followed him to light him cheerily on his way. He knew that he should
find her on his return busied in little preparations for his welcome. In
summer time, the bower in the garden would be adorned; in the inclement
season of winter the logs would blaze on the hearth, his chair be drawn
towards the fire, the stool for Ethel at his feet, with nothing to
remind him of the past, save her dear presence, which drew its greatest
charm, not from that, but from the present. Fitzhenry forgot the
thousand delights of civilization, for which formerly his heart had
painfully yearned. He forgot ambition, and the enticements of gay
vanity; peace and security appeared the greatest blessings of life, and
he had them here.
Ethel herself was happy beyond the knowledge of her own happiness. She
regretted nothing in the old country. She grew up among the grandest
objects of nature, and they were the sweet influences to excite her to
love and to a sense of pleasure. She had come to the Illinois attended
by a black woman and her daughter, whom her father had engaged to attend
her at New York, and had been sedulously kept away from communication
with the settlers--an arrangement which it would have been difficult to
bring about elsewhere, but in this secluded and almost deserted spot the
usual characteristics of the Americans were scarcely to be found. Most
of the inhabitants were emigrants from Scotland, a peaceable,
hard-working population.
Ethel lived alone in their lonely dwelling. Had she been of a more
advanced age when taken from England, her curiosity might have been
excited by the singularity of her position; but we rarely reason about
that which has remained unchanged since infancy; taking it as a part of
the immutable order of things, we yield without a question to its
controul. Ethel did not know that she was alone. Her attendants she was
attached to, and she idolized her father; his image filled all her
little heart. Playmate she had none, save a fawn and a kid, a dog grown
old in her service, and a succession of minor favourites of the animal
species.
It was Fitzhenry's wish to educate his daughter to all the perfection of
which the feminine character is susceptible. As the first step, he cut
her off from familiar communication with the unrefined, and, watching
over her with the fondest care, kept her far aloof from the very
knowledge of what might, by its baseness or folly, contaminate the
celestial beauty of her nature. He resolved to make her all that woman
can be of generous, soft, and devoted; to purge away every alloy of
vanity and petty passion--to fill her with honour, and yet to mould her
to the sweetest gentleness: to cultivate her tastes and enlarge her
mind, yet so to controul her acquirements, as to render her ever pliant
to his will. She was to be lifted above every idea of artifice or guile,
or the caballing spirit of the worldling--she was to be single-hearted,
yet mild. A creature half poetry, half love--one whose pure lips had
never been tainted by an untruth--an enthusiastic being, who could give
her life away for the sake of another, and yet who honoured herself as a
consecrated thing reserved for one worship alone. She was taught that no
misfortune should penetrate her soul, except such as visited her
affections, or her sense of right; and that, set apart from the vulgar
uses of the world, she was connected with the mass only through
another--that other, now her father and only friend--hereafter,
whosoever her heart might select as her guide and head. Fitzhenry drew
his chief ideas from Milton's Eve, and adding to this the romance of
chivalry, he satisfied himself that his daughter would be the embodied
ideal of all that is adorable and estimable in her sex.
The instructor can scarcely give sensibility where it is essentially
wanting, nor talent to the unpercipient block. But he can cultivate and
detect the affections of the pupil, who puts forth, as a parasite,
tendrils by which to cling, not knowing to what--to a supporter or a
destroyer. The careful rearer of the ductile human plant can instil his
own religion, and surround the soul by such a moral atmosphere, as shall
become to its latest day the air it breathes. Ethel, from her delicate
organization and quick parts, was sufficiently plastic in her father's
hands. When not with him, she was the playmate of nature. Her birds and
pet animals--her untaught but most kind nurse, were her associates: she
had her flowers to watch over, her music, her drawings, and her books.
Nature, wild, interminable, sublime, was around her. The ceaseless flow
of the brawling stream, the wide-spread forest, the changes of the sky,
the career of the wide-winged clouds, when the winds drove them athwart
the atmosphere, or the repose of the still, and stirless summer air, the
stormy war of the elements, and the sense of trust and security amidst
their loudest disturbances, were all circumstances to mould her even
unconsciously to an admiration of all that is grand and beautiful.
A lofty sense of independence is, in man, the best privilege of his
nature. It cannot be doubted, but that it were for the happiness of the
other sex that she were taught more to rely on and act for herself. But
in the cultivation of this feeling, the education of Fitzhenry was
lamentably deficient. Ethel was taught to know herself dependent; the
support of another was to be as necessary to her as her daily food. She
leant on her father as a prop that could not fail, and she was wholly
satisfied with her condition. Her peculiar disposition of course tinged
Fitzhenry's theories with colours not always their own, and her entire
want of experience in intercourse with her fellow-creatures, gave a more
decided tone to her sense of dependence than she could have acquired, if
the circumstances of her daily life had brought her into perpetual
collision with others. She was habitually cheerful even to gaiety; yet
her character was not devoid of petulence, which might become rashness
or self-will if left to herself. She had a clear and upright spirit, and
suspicion or unkindness roused her to indignation, or sunk her into the
depths of sorrow. Place her in danger, and tell her she must encounter
it, and she called up all her courage and became a heroine; but on less
occasions, difficulties dismayed and annoyed her, and she longed to
escape from them into that dreamy existence, for which her solitary mode
of life had given her a taste: active in person, in mind she was too
often indolent, and apt to think that while she was docile to the
injunctions of her parent, all her duties were fulfilled. She seldom
thought, and never acted, for herself.
With all this she was so caressingly affectionate, so cheerful and
obedient, that she inspired her father with more than a father's
fondness. He lived but for her and in her. Away, she was present to his
imagination, the loadstone to draw him home, and to fill that home with
pleasure. He exalted her in his fancy into angelic perfection, and
nothing occurred to blot the fair idea. He in prospect gave up his whole
life to the warding off every evil from her dear and sacred head. He
knew, or rather believed, that while we possess one real, devoted, and
perfect friend, we cannot be truly miserable. He said to himself--though
he did not love to dwell on the thought--that of course cares and
afflictions might hereafter befal her; but he was to stand the shield to
blunt the arrows of sorrow--the shelter in which she might find refuge
from every evil ministration. The worst ills of life, penury and
desertion, she could never know; and surely he, who would stand so fast
by her through all--whose nightly dream and waking thought was for her
good, would even, when led to form other connexions in life, so command
her affections as to be able to influence her happiness.
Not being able to judge by comparison, Ethel was unaware of the
peculiarity of her good fortune in possessing such a father. But she
loved him entirely; looked up to him, and saw in him the reward of every
exertion, the object of each day's employment. In early youth we have no
true notion of what the realities of life are formed, and when we look
forward it is without any correct estimate of the chances of existence.
Ethel's visionary ideas were all full of peace, seclusion, and her
father. America, or rather the little village of the Illinois which she
inhabited, was all the world to her; and she had no idea that nearly
every thing that connected her to society existed beyond the far
Atlantic, in that tiny isle which made so small a show upon her maps.
Fitzhenry never mentioned these things to his daughter. She arrived at
the age of fifteen without forming a hope that should lead her beyond
the pale which had hitherto enclosed her, or having imagined that any
train of circumstances might suddenly transplant her from the lonely
wilderness to the thronged resorts of mankind.