Susan Edmonstoune Ferrier

“ In the present redundant age of novel writers and novel-readers, and when one would suppose the supply must far exceed the demand from the amount of puerile and often at the same time prurient literature in the department of fiction that daily flows from the press, it is refreshing to turn to the vigorous and, above all, healthy moral tone of this lady's works. To the present generation they are as if they had never been, and to the question, "Did you ever read Marriage?" it is not uncommon in these times to get such an answer as, "No, never. Who wrote it?" "Miss Ferrier." ”

“ Mary," she would sometimes say, "God forgive me! but my heart is not yet weaned from worldly wishes. Even now, when I feel all the vanity of human happiness, I think how it would have soothed my last moments could I have but seen you my son's before I left the world! Yet, alas! our time here is so short that it matters little whether it be spent in joy or grief, provided it be spent in innocence and virtue. Mine has been a long life compared to many; but when I look back upon it, what a span it seems! ”

“ My DEAR MISS FERRIER—I should not have been so long in thanking you for your kind present, had I not wished to subject Destiny to a severer test than that chosen by the French dramatist. His old woman probably partook of the vivacity of her nation, but my old aunt, as Mary will tell you, is sick and often very sorrowful, and yet Destiny has made her laugh heartily, and cheated her of many wearisome hours of lamentation. ”

“ I seldom meet with anybody who is not entertaining, either from their folly, or their affectation, or their stupidity, or their vanity; or, in short, something of the ridiculous, that renders them not merely supportable, but positively amusing."
"How extremely happy you must be," said Lord Lindore.
"Happy! No—I don't know that my feelings precisely amount to happiness neither; for at the very time I'm most diverted I'm sometimes disgusted too, and often provoked. My spirit gets chafed, and—-"
"You long to box the ears of all your acquaintances," said her brother, laughing. ”

“ It rests with you, Mary, to be the founder of our friendship; and if you manage the matter well, that is, sing in your best manner, we shall perhap, make it a triple alliance, and admit you as third."
"As every man is said to be the artificer of his own fortune, so every one, I think, had best be the artificer of their own friendship," said Mary, trying to smile, as she pulled her embroidery frame towards her, and began to work.
"Neither can be the worse of a good friend to help them on," observed Mrs. Downe Wright. ”

“ Lady Emily threw her arms around her:—"Dear Mary, you are perhaps the only person upon earth I would make such a confession to—it was because I, who had plighted my faith to another—I, who piqued myself upon my openness and fidelity—I—how it chokes me to utter it! I was beginning to love him myself!—only beginning, observe, for it is already over—I needed but to be aware of my danger to overcome it. Colonel Lennox is now no more to me than your lover, and Edward is again all that he ever was to me ”

“ But Adelaide was aware she had a part to act, and she went through it with an ease and self-possession that seemed to defy all scrutiny. Once or twice, indeed, her deepening colour and darkening brow betrayed the feelings of her heart, as the Duke of Altamont and Lord Lindore were brought into comparison; and Mary shuddered to think that her sister was even now ashamed of the man whom she was so soon to vow to love, honour, and obey. She had vainly tried to lead Adelaide to the subject. Adelaide would listen to nothing which she had reason to suppose was addressed to herself ”

“ While the instinct of a parent's love warmed her heart, as she pressed her infant to her bosom, the sadness of affectionate and rational solicitude stifled every sentiment of pleasure as she gazed on the altered and drooping form of her adopted daughter of the child who had already repaid the cares that had been lavished on her, and in whom she descried the promise of a plenteous harvest from the good seed she had sown. Though Mary had been healthy in childhood, her constitution was naturally delicate, and she had latterly outgrown her strength. ”

“ It is impossible for language to express to you the shame, grief, amazement, and indignation, with which we are all filled at the distressing, the ignominious disclosure that has just taken place concerning you, through our most excellent friend Miss P. M'Pry. Oh, Mary, how have you deceived us all!!! What a dagger have you plunged into all our hearts! Your poor Aunt Grizzy! how my heart bleeds for her! What a difficult part has she to act! and at her time of life! with her acute feelings! with her devoted attachment to the house of M'Laughlan! ”

“ Adelaide was indignant that he had not instantly paid her the most marked attention, and revenged herself by her silence. In short, Lord Lindore's arrival seemed to have added little or nothing to the general stock of pleasure; and the effervescence of joy—the rapture of sensation, like some subtle essence, had escaped almost as soon as it was perceived.
"How stupid everybody always is at a dinner table!" exclaimed Lady Emily, rising abruptly with an air of chagrin. "I believe it is the fumes of the meat that dulls one's senses, and renders them so detestable. ”

“ But even these little torments were forgot by Mary when she found herself again in her native land. The hills, the air, the waters, the people, even the peat-stacks, had a charm that touched her heart, and brought tears into her eyes as they pictured home. But her feelings arose to rapture when Lochmarlie burst upon her view in all the grandeur, beauty, and repose of a setting sun, shedding its farewell rays of gold and purple, and tints of such matchless hue, as no pencil ere can imitate—no poet's pen describe. ”

“ But the youthful heart must ever remain a stranger to this saddening truth. Experience only can convince us that happiness is not a plant of this world; and that, though many an eye hath beheld its blossoms no mortal hand hath ever gathered its fruits. This, then, was Mary's first lesson in what is called the knowledge of life, as opposed to the beau ideal of a young and ardent imagination in love with life, and luxuriating in its own happiness. ”

“ She had never been accustomed to lavish the best feelings of her nature on frivolous pursuits or fictitious distresses, but had early been taught to consecrate them to the best, the most ennobling purposes of humanity—even to the comforting of the weary soul, the binding of the bruised heart. Yet Mary was no rigid moralist. She loved amusement as the amusement of an imperfect existence, though her good sense and still better principles taught her to reject it as the business of an immortal being. ”

“ Her sister's streaming eyes and supplicating voice spoke a language to which she was a stranger; for art is ever averse to recognise the accents of nature. Still less is it capable of replying to them; and Adelaide could only wonder at her sister's agitation, and think how unpleasant it was; and say something about overcome, and eau-de-luce, and composure; which was all lost upon Mary as she hung upon her neck, every feeling wrought to its highest tone by the complicated nature of those emotions which swelled her heart. ”

“ Downe Wright arrived with her son, evidently primed for falling in love at first sight. He was a very handsome young man, gentle, and rather pleasing in his manners; and Mary, to whom his intentions were not so palpable, thought him by no means deserving of the contempt her cousin had expressed for him.
"Well!" cried Lady Emily, after they were gone, "the plot begins to thicken; lovers begin to pour in, but all for Mary; how mortifying to you and me, Adelaide! At this rate we shall have nothing to boast of in the way of disinterested attachment nobody refused!—nothing renounced! ”

“ Mary followed, vainly hoping that in this moment of excited feeling she might be induced to open her heart to the voice of affection; but Adelaide was a stranger to sympathy, and saw only the degradation of confessing the struggle she endured in choosing betwixt love and ambition. That her heart was Lord Lindore's she could not conceal from herself, though she would not confess it to another—and that other the tenderest of sisters, whose only wish was to serve her. ”

“ She loved to recall the remembrance of her children—to tell of their infant beauties, their growing virtues—and to retrace scenes of past felicity which memory loves to treasure in the heart.
"Oh! none but a mother can tell," she would exclaim, "the bitterness of those tears which fall from a mother's eyes. All other sorrows seem natural, but—God forgive me!—surely it is not natural that the old should weep for the young. Oh! when I saw myself surrounded by my children, little did I think that death was so soon to seal their eyes! ”

“ Nature was in all its first freshness and beauty—the ground was covered with flowers, the luxuriant hedgerows were white with blossoms, the air was impregnated with the odours of the gardens and orchards. Still Mary sighed as she thought of Lochmarlie—its wild tangled woods, with here and there a bunch of primroses peeping forth from amidst moss and withered ferns—its gurgling rills, blue lakes, and rocks, and mountains—all rose to view ”

“ Now, to enter into the conception of a dog—to embody one's self, as it were, in the person of a brute—to sympathise in its feelings—to make its propensities our own—to 'lazily mumble the bones of the dead,' with our own individual 'white tusks'! Pardon me, madam, but with all due deference to the genius of a Scott, it is a thing he has not dare to attempt. Only the finest mind in the universe as capable of taking so bold a flight. Scott's dogs, madam, are tame, domestic animals—mere human dogs, if I may say so. Byron's dogs—But let them speak for themselves! ”

“ True love begun shall never end:
Love one, and love no more.'" [1]
But much as Mary loved and admired her cousin, she could not be blind to the defects of her character, and she feared they might yet be productive of great unhappiness to herself. Her mind was open to the reception of every image that brought pleasure along with it; while, in the same spirit, she turned from everything that wore an air of seriousness or self-restraint; and even the best affections of a naturally good heart were borne away by the ardour of her feelings and the impetuosity of her temper. ”

“ How it shocks me to hear people recommending to their children to copy such a person's manners! A copied manner, how insupportable! The servile imitator of a set pattern, how despicable! No! I would rather have Edward in all the freshness of his own faults rather than in the faded semblance of another persons's proprieties."
Mary agreed to the truth of her cousin's observations in some respects, though she could not help thinking that love had as much to say in her case as in most others; for if it did not blind her to her lover's faults, it certainly made her much more tolerant of them. ”

“ In the arrangements of an all-wise Providence there is nothing created in vain. Every link of the vast chain that embraces creation helps to hold together the various relations of life; and all is beautiful gradation, from the human vegetable to the glorious archangel.
If patient hope, if unexulting joy, and chastened anticipation, sanctifying a mother's love, could have secured her happiness, Mrs. Douglas would have found, in the smiles of her infant, all the comfort her virtue deserved. ”