Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete

								

till they retired to rest.
And the lady blessed Evelyn, and felt that, if bereaved, she was not
alone.

CHAPTER III.


BUT come, thou Goddess, fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne!


......


To hear the lark begin his flight,
And, singing, startle the dull night.--L'Allegro.


But come, thou Goddess, sage and holy,
Come, divinest Melancholy!


......


There held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble.--Il Penseroso.
THE early morn of early spring--what associations of freshness and hope
in that single sentence! And there a little after sunrise--there was
Evelyn, fresh and hopeful as the morning itself, bounding with the light
step of a light heart over the lawn. Alone, alone! no governess, with a
pinched nose and a sharp voice, to curb her graceful movements, and tell
her how young ladies ought to walk. How silently morning stole over
the earth! It was as if youth had the day and the world to itself. The
shutters of the cottage were still closed, and Evelyn cast a glance
upward, to assure herself that her mother, who also rose betimes, was
not yet stirring. So she tripped along, singing from very glee, to
secure a companion, and let out Sultan; and a few moments afterwards,
they were scouring over the grass, and descending the rude steps that
wound down the cliff to the smooth sea sands. Evelyn was still a child
at heart, yet somewhat more than a child in mind. In the majesty of--


"That hollow, sounding, and mysterious main,"--
in the silence broken but by the murmur of the billows, in the solitude
relieved but by the boats of the early fishermen, she felt those deep
and tranquillizing influences which belong to the Religion of Nature.
Unconsciously to herself, her sweet face grew more thoughtful, and
her step more slow. What a complex thing is education! How many
circumstances, that have no connection with books and tutors, contribute
to the rearing of the human mind! The earth and the sky and the ocean
were among the teachers of Evelyn Cameron; and beneath her simplicity
of thought was daily filled, from the turns of invisible spirits, the
fountain of the poetry of feeling.
This was the hour when Evelyn most sensibly felt how little our real
life is chronicled by external events,--how much we live a second and
a higher life in our meditations and dreams. Brought up, not more by
precept than example, in the faith which unites creature and Creator,
this was the hour in which thought itself had something of the holiness
of prayer; and if (turning from dreams divine to earlier visions)
this also was the hour in which the heart painted and peopled its own
fairyland below, of the two ideal worlds that stretch beyond the inch of
time on which we stand, Imagination is perhaps holier than Memory.
So now, as the day crept on, Evelyn returned in a more sober mood, and
then she joined her mother and Mrs. Leslie at breakfast; and then the