ut of
less energetic mould--and last of all, the mystery of madness breaking
suddenly forth from spirits that seemed to have been especially formed
for profoundest peace. There were three sons and two daughters,
undegenerate from the ancient stateliness of the race--the oldest on his
approach to manhood erect as the young cedar, that seems conscious of
being destined one day to be the tallest tree in the woods. The
twin-sisters were ladies indeed! Lovely as often are the low-born, no
maiden ever stepped from her native cottage-door, even in a poet's
dream, with such an air as that with which those fair beings walked
along their saloons and lawns. Their beauty no one could at all
describe--and no one beheld it who did not say that it transcended all
that imagination had been able to picture of angelic and divine. As the
sisters were, so were the brothers--distinguished above all their mates
conspicuously, and beyond all possibility of mistake; so that strangers
could single them out at once as the heirs of beauty, that, according to
veritable pictures and true traditions, had been an unalienable gift
from nature to that family ever since it bore the name. For the last
three generations none of that house had ever reached even the meridian
of life--and those of whom we now speak had from childhood been orphans.
Yet how joyous and free were they one and all, and how often from this
cell did evening hear their holy harmonies, as the Five united together
with voice, harp, and dulcimer, till the stars themselves rejoiced!--One
morning, Louisa, who loved the dewy dawn, was met bewildered in her
mind, and perfectly astray--with no symptom of having been suddenly
alarmed or terrified--but with an unrecognising smile, and eyes scarcely
changed in their expression, although they knew not--but rarely--on whom
they looked. It was but a few months till she died--and Adelaide was
laughing carelessly on her sister's funeral day--and asked why mourning
should be worn at a marriage, and a plumed hearse sent to take away the
bride. Fairest of God's creatures! can it be that thou art still alive?
Not with cherubs smiling round thy knees--not walking in the free realms
of earth and heaven with thy husband--the noble youth, who loved thee
from thy childhood when himself a child; but oh! that such misery can be
beneath the sun--shut up in some narrow cell perhaps--no one knows
where--whether in this thy native kingdom, or in some foreign land--