Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 | Page 5

mouldering in the clay?"
Not that the child had any thought of death, for she was as full of life as
the star above her was of lustre--tamed though they both were by the
holy hour. At our bidding she renewed the strain that had ceased as we
met, and continued to sing it while we parted, her voice dying away in
the distance, like an angel's from a broken dream. Never heard we that
voice again, for in three little weeks it had gone, to be extinguished no
more, to join the heavenly choirs at the feet of the Redeemer.
Did both her parents lose all love to life, when their sole daughter was
taken away? And did they die finally of broken hearts? No--such is not
the natural working of the human spirit, if kept in repair by pure and
pious thought. Never were they so happy indeed as they had once
been--nor was their happiness of the same kind. Oh! different far in
resignation that often wept when it did not repine--in faith that now
held a tenderer commerce with the skies! Smiles were not very long of
being again seen at Mount Pleasant. An orphan cousin of Mary's--they
had been as sisters--took her place, and filled it too, as far as the living
can ever fill the place of the dead. Common cares continued for a while
to occupy the Elder and his wife, for there were not a few to whom
their substance was to be a blessing. Ordinary observers could not have
discerned any abatement of his activities in field or market; but others

saw that the toil to him was now but a duty that had formerly been a
delight. Mount Pleasant was let to a relative, and the Morrisons retired
to a small house, with a garden, a few hundred yards from the kirk. Let
him be strong as a giant, infirmities often come on the hard-working
man before you can well call him old. It was so with Adam Morrison.
He broke down fast, we have been told, in his sixtieth year, and after
that partook but of one sacrament. Not in tales of fiction alone do those
who have long loved and well, lay themselves down and die in each
other's arms. Such happy deaths are recorded on humble tombstones;
and there is one on which this inscription may be read--"HERE LIE
THE BODIES OF ADAM MORRISON AND OF HELEN ARMOUR
HIS SPOUSE. THEY DIED ON THE 1ST OF MAY 17--. HERE
ALSO LIES THE BODY OF THEIR DAUGHTER, MARY
MORRISON, WHO DIED JUNE 2, 17--." The headstone is a granite
slab--as they almost all are in that kirkyard--and the kirk itself is of the
same enduring material. But touching that grave is a Marble Monument,
white almost as the very snow, and, in the midst of the emblazonry of
death, adorned with the armorial bearings belonging to a family of the
high-born.
Sworn Brother of our soul! during the bright ardours of boyhood, when
the present was all-sufficient in its own bliss, the past soon forgotten,
and the future unfeared, what might have been thy lot, beloved Harry
Wilton, had thy span of life been prolonged to this very day? Better--oh!
far better was it for thee and thine that thou didst so early die; for it
seemeth that a curse is on that lofty lineage; and that, with all their
genius, accomplishments, and virtues, dishonour comes and goes, a
familiar and privileged guest, out and in their house. Shame never
veiled the light of those bold eyes, nor tamed the eloquence of those
sunny lips, nor ever for a single moment bowed down that young
princely head that, like a fast-growing flower, seemed each successive
morning to be visibly rising up towards a stately manhood. But the time
was not far distant, when to thee life would have undergone a rueful
transformation. Thy father, expatriated by the spells of a sorceress, and
forced into foreign countries, to associate with vice, worthlessness,
profligacy, and crime! Thy mother, dead of a broken heart! And that
lovely sister, who came to the Manse with her jewelled hair--But all

these miserable things who could prophesy, at the hour when we and
the weeping villagers laid thee, apart from the palace and the
burial-vault of thy high-born ancestors, without anthem or organ-peal,
among the humble dead? Needless and foolish were all those floods of
tears. In thy brief and beautiful course, nothing have we who loved thee
to lament or condemn. In few memories, indeed, doth thy image now
survive; for in process of time what young face fadeth not away from
eyes busied with the shows of this living world? What young voice is
not bedumbed to ears for ever filled with its perplexing