the bitterness of punishment! The fated house falls, and with it the lovely and fragile flower that had rashly clung to the decaying wall. There is something so gentle, so touching in Lucy Ashton, that we marvel how human being could be found to visit one so soft, too roughly. But that wonder ceases in the presence of those human demons, hatred, pride, and revenge. Lucy is but one of these tender blossoms crushed without care on our daily path. Though, from her vivid imagination, likely to love a man like Ravensworth, she was unfit to be his wife; still more unfit to struggle with the difficulties attendant on an engagement which the heart kept but too truly. The moral change is exquisitely developed. First, there is the pensive girl, pensive because—
"In youth sad fancies we affect;"
then comes a brief season of love whose very happiness
"Might make the heart afraid;"
then regret, restraint, and unkindliness. Visionary terrors heighten the doubts, that he, for whose sake she endures all this, holds the sacrifice light. The domestic persecution—persecution the hardest to bear—goes on, eyes that once looked love, now turn on her in anger or disdain. The temper gives way, then the mind. Echo
VOL. II.H
