e. So that all the elements and attributes of his
being stand and work together in living coherence, thus rendering him
no less substantive and personal to our apprehension than he is
original and peculiar in himself.

* * * * *

Such are the objects and influences amidst which the clear, placid
nature of Miranda has been developed. Of the world whence her father
was driven, its crimes and follies and sufferings, she knows nothing;
he having studiously kept all such notices from her, to the end,
apparently, that nothing might thwart or hinder the plastic efficacies
that surrounded her. And here all the simple and original elements of
her being, love, light, grace, honour, innocence, all pure feelings
and tender sympathies, whatever is sweet and gentle and holy in
womanhood, seem to have sprung up in her nature as from celestial
seed: "the contagion of the world's slow stain" has not visited her;
the chills and cankers of artificial wisdom have not touched nor come
nigh her: if there were any fog or breath of evil in the place that
might else dim or spot her soul, it has been sponged up by Caliban, as
being more congenial with his nature; while he is simply "a villain
she does not love to look on." Nor is this all. The aerial music
beneath which her soul has expanded with answering sweetness seems to
rest visibly upon her, linking her as it were with some superior order
of beings: the spirit and genius of the place, its magic and mystery,
have breathed their power into her face; and out of them she has
unconsciously woven herself a robe of supernatural grace, in which
even her mortal nature seems half hidden, so that we are in doubt
whether she belongs more to Heaven or to Earth. Thus both her native
virtues and the efficacies of the place seem to have crept and stolen
into her unperceived, by mutual attraction and assimilation twining
together in one growth, and each diffusing its life and beauty over
and through the others. It would seem indeed as if Wordsworth must
have had Miranda in his eye, (or was he but working in the spirit of
that Nature which she so rarely exemplifies?) when he wrote,

"The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend:
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.

The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall