ate of her uncle's
fortunes--was far from preparing her for the cold reality she witnessed.
It was not the ruined walls, the treeless mountain, the desolate and
dreary look of all around, that smote upon her heart; sad as these signs
were, her grief had a higher source: it was the sight of that old man
she called father, tottering feebly to the grave, surrounded by images
of poverty and misfortune. It was the aspect of Mark, the cousin,
she had pictured to her mind as an accomplished gentleman in look and
demeanour; the descendant of a house more than noble--the heir of a vast
property; and now she saw him, scarce in gesture and manner above the
peasant--in dress, as slovenly and uncared for. She was prepared for a
life of monotonous retirement and isolation. She was ready to face the
long winter of dreary solitude--but not in such company as this. That
she never calculated on. Her worst anticipations had never conjured up
more than an unchequered existence, with little to vary or relieve it;
and now, she foresaw a life to be passed amid the miserable straits and
shifts of poverty, with all its petty incidents and lowering accidents,
to lessen her esteem for those she wished to look up to and love. And
this was Carrig-na-curra, the proud castle she had so often boasted of
to her school companions, the baronial seat she had loved to exalt
above the antique chateaux of France and Flanders; and these the haughty
relatives, whose pride she mentioned as disdaining the alliance of the
Saxon, and spurning all admixture of blood with a race less noble than
their own. The very chamber she sat in, how did it contradict her own
animated descriptions of its once comforts and luxuries! Alas! it seemed
to be like duplicity and falsehood, that she had so spoken of these
things. More than once she asked herself--"Were they always thus?"
Poor child! she knew not that poverty can bring sickness, and sorrow
and premature old age. It can devastate the fields, and desolate the
affections, and make cold both heart and home together!

If want stopped short at privation, men need not to tremble at its
approach. It is in the debasing and degrading influence of poverty its
real terror lies. It is in the plastic facility with which the poor man
shifts to meet the coming evil, that the high principle of rectitude is
sacrificed, and the unflinching course of honour deviated from. When the
proud three decker, in all the majesty of her might, may sail