and liked the
journey.' When I married, I found in your uncle a character
exactly opposed to my father's, but not perhaps more suited to
mine. The invincible reserve, the minute despotism, or rather
absolutism, of his nature, raised between us the same barrier,
which worldliness of mind and absence of warm feelings had
caused to exist between my father and myself. You have seen
and observed this drawback to our happiness, Ellen, or I
should not have pointed out to you this single imperfection in
as amiable and excellent a character as ever existed. Your
uncle's favourite maxim is, 'Deeds, not words;' and well has
he acted up to it himself; but his mistake is, in not
perceiving that there are characters in which, without
_words_, there can scarcely be _deeds;_ for which sympathy and
encouragement are as necessary as air is to life, or sunshine
to vegetation. For some time after I was married, I struggled
to supply the want of responsiveness in his nature, by the
expansive enthusiasm of mine; but, worn out at last, by the
fruitless and fatiguing exertion of heart and mind, which this
kind of continual drawing upon one's own feelings entails,
bruised and jarred by the unflinching positiveness which met
them at every turn, I gave up the attempt in despair. I did my
_duty;_ I performed the _deeds_ required of me; but the
_words_, the unsubstantial, but not unreal, part of our daily
lives, of our busy minds,--which must assert itself in some
shape or other,--which must find vent in some form, or recoil
upon ourselves in moral or physical suffering,--that half of
my being remained closed to him, whom I loved and respected,
but between whose mind and my own the point of contact was
wanting. Of Henry, for many reasons, I had rather not talk to
you. You know that I have never hesitated to tell myself the
truth, or to destroy an illusion, which in the secrecy of my
heart I have felt to be such; but it requires a courage and a
strength which, to-day especially, I do not find in myself, to
trace the progress of estrangement in an affection once as
intense as a mother's; and which still asserts its own
existence by the sufferings it inflicts. Do not look
inquiringly at me, Ellen; I have nothing to tell, nothing to
explain, nothing to complain of; I only know that there was a
time when my whole soul was wrapped up in Henry, as it has
since been in you;--a time when his eyes would seek mine in
the hour of joy or of sorrow,--a time