Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 | Page 4

a
touch of natural pathos that finds its way to the heart. But as the
nightingale would sing truly its own variegated song, although it never
were to hear any one of its own kind warbling from among the
shrub-roots, and the lark, though alone on earth, would sing the hymn
well known at the gate of heaven, so all untaught but by the nature
within her, and inspired by her own delightful genius alone, did Mary
Morrison feel all the measures of those ancient melodies, and give them
all an expression at once simple and profound. People who said they
did not care about music, especially Scottish music, it was so
monotonous and insipid, laid aside their indifferent looks before three
notes of the simplest air had left Mary Morrison's lips, as she sat faintly
blushing, less in bashfulness than in her own emotion, with her little
hands playing perhaps with flowers, and her eyes fixed on the ground,
or raised, ever and anon, to the roof. "In all common things," would
most people say, "she is but a very ordinary girl--but her musical turn is
really very singular indeed;"--but her happy father and mother knew,
that in all common things--that is, in all the duties of an humble and
innocent life, their Mary was by nature excellent as in the melodies and
harmonies of song--and that while her voice in the evening-psalm was
as angel's sweet, so was her spirit almost pure as an angel's, and nearly

inexperienced of sin.
Proud, indeed, were her parents on that May-day to look upon her--and
to listen to her--as their Mary sat beside the young English
boy--admired of all observers--and happier than she had ever been in
this world before, in the charm of their blended music, and the
unconscious affection--sisterly, yet more than sisterly, for brother she
had none--that towards one so kind and noble was yearning at her heart.
Beautiful were they both; and when they sat side-by-side in their music,
insensible must that heart have been by whom they were not both
admired and beloved. It was thought that they loved one another too,
too well; for Harry Wilton was the grandson of an English Peer, and
Mary Morrison a peasant's child; but they could not love too well--she
in her tenderness--he in his passion--for, with them, life and love was a
delightful dream, out of which they were never to be awakened. For as
by some secret sympathy, both sickened on the same day--of the same
fever--and died at the same hour;--and not from any dim intention of
those who buried them, but accidentally, and because the burial-ground
of the Minister and the Elder adjoined, were they buried almost in the
same grave--for not half a yard of daisied turf divided them--a curtain
between the beds on which brother and sister slept.
In their delirium they both talked about each other--Mary Morrison and
Harry Wilton--yet their words were not words of love, only of common
kindness; for although on their death-beds they did not talk about death,
but frequently about that May-day Festival, and other pleasant meetings
in neighbours' houses, or in the Manse. Mary sometimes rose up in bed,
and in imagination joined her voice to that of the flute which to his lips
was to breathe no more; and even at the very self-same moment--so it
wonderfully was--did he tell all to be hushed, for that Mary Morrison
was about to sing the Flowers of the Forest.
Methinks that no deep impressions of the past, although haply they may
sleep for ever, and seem as if they had ceased to be, are ever utterly
obliterated; but that they may, one and all, reappear at some hour or
other however distant, legible as at the very moment they were first
engraven on the memory. Not by the power of meditation are the

long-ago vanished thoughts or emotions restored to us, in which we
found delight or disturbance; but of themselves do they seem to arise,
not undesired indeed, but unbidden, like sea-birds that come
unexpectedly floating up into some inland vale, because, unknown to
us who wonder at them, the tide is flowing and the breezes blow from
the main. Bright as the living image stands now before us the ghost--for
what else is it than the ghost--of Mary Morrison, just as she stood
before us on one particular day--in one particular place, innumerable
years ago! It was at the close of one of those midsummer days which
melt away into twilight, rather than into night, although the stars are
visible, and bird and beast asleep. All by herself, as she walked along
between the braes, was she singing a hymn,--
"And must this body die? This mortal frame decay? And must these
feeble limbs of mine Lie