Previous - Next

strongly. Perhaps during former years he had suffered from the
late-discovered unworthiness of one beloved and so was disposed to set
a greater value on tried worth. There was a show of gratitude and
worship in his attachment to my mother, differing wholly from the
doting fondness of age, for it was inspired by reverence for her
virtues and a desire to be the means of, in some degree, recompensing
her for the sorrows she had endured, but which gave inexpressible grace
to his behaviour to her. Everything was made to yield to her wishes
and her convenience. He strove to shelter her, as a fair exotic is
sheltered by the gardener, from every rougher wind and to surround her
with all that could tend to excite pleasurable emotion in her soft and
benevolent mind. Her health, and even the tranquillity of her hitherto
constant spirit, had been shaken by what she had gone through. During
the two years that had elapsed previous to their marriage my father had
gradually relinquished all his public functions; and immediately after
their union they sought the pleasant climate of Italy, and the change
of scene and interest attendant on a tour through that land of wonders,
as a restorative for her weakened frame.

From Italy they visited Germany and France. I, their eldest child, was
born at Naples, and as an infant accompanied them in their rambles. I
remained for several years their only child. Much as they were
attached to each other, they seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of
affection from a very mine of love to bestow them upon me. My mother's
tender caresses and my father's smile of benevolent pleasure while
regarding me are my first recollections. I was their plaything and
their idol, and something better--their child, the innocent and
helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good,
and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or
misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me. With this
deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they
had given life, added to the active spirit of tenderness that animated
both, it may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life
I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, I was
so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment
to me. For a long time I was their only care. My mother had much
desired to have a daughter, but I continued their single offspring.
When I was about five years old, while making an excursion beyond the
frontiers of Italy, they passed a week on the shores of the Lake of
Como. Their benevolent disposition often made them enter the cottages
of the poor. This, to my mother, was more than a duty; it was a
necessity, a passion--remembering what she had suffered, and how she
had been relieved--for her to act in her turn the guardian angel to the
afflicted.

Previous - Next