“On the young imagination of Elinor, this scene was indelibly written. Amid the magnificence of Mortimer Castle, it had never been effaced or obscured, and now she tried to make herself in love with the sounds and the scene that had so deeply touched her infant heart.
“Resolute in her purposes, she spared no pains to excite this reminiscence of religion,--it was her last resource. Like the wife of Phineas, she struggled to bear an heir of the soul, even while she named him _Ichabod_,--and felt the glory was departed. She went to the narrow apartment,--she seated herself in the very chair that venerable man occupied when he was torn from it, and his departure appeared to her like that of an ascending prophet. She would _then_ have caught the folds of his mantle, and mounted with him, even though his flight had led to prison and to death. She tried, by repeating his last words, to produce the same effect they had once had on her heart, and wept in indescribable agony at feeling those words had no meaning now for her. When life and passion have thus rejected us, the backward steps we are compelled to tread towards the path we have wandered from, are ten thousand times more torturing and arduous than those we have exhausted in their pursuit. Hope then supported our hands every step we took. Remorse and disappointment scourge us back, and every step is tinged with tears or with blood; and well it is for the pilgrim if that blood is drained from his heart, for then--his pilgrimage will be sooner terminated. * * * * *
“At times Elinor, who had forgotten neither the language or habits of her former existence, would speak in a manner that gave her Puritanic relative hopes that, according to the language of the times, “the root of the matter was in her,”--and when the old lady, in confidence of her returning orthodoxy, discussed long and learnedly on the election and perseverance of the saints, the listener would startle her by a burst of feeling, that seemed to her aunt more like the ravings of a demoniac, than the language of a human being,--especially one who had from her youth known the Scriptures. She would say, “Dearest aunt, I am not insensible of what you say; from a child, (thanks to your care), I have known the holy scriptures. I _have_ felt the power of religion. At a latter period I have experienced all the enjoyments of an intellectual existence. Surrounded by splendour, I have conversed with enlarged minds,--I have seen all that life can shew me,--I have lived with the mean and the rich,--the spiritual in their poverty, and the worldly-minded in their grandeur,--I have deeply drank of the cup which both modes of existence held to my lip,--and at this moment I swear to you,--_one moment of heart_,--one dream such as once I dreamed, (and thought I should never awake from), is worth all the existence that the earthly-minded lavish on this world, and those who mystify expend on the next!”--“Unfortunate wretch! and undone for everlasting!” cried the terrified Calvinist, lifting up her hands,--“Cease, cease,” said Elinor with that dignity which grief alone can give,--“If I have indeed devoted to an earthly love that which is due to God alone, is not my punishment certain in a future state? Has it not already commenced here? May not then all reproaches be spared when we are suffering more than human enmity can wish us,--when our very existence is a bitterer reproach to us than malignity can utter?”--As she spoke, she added, wiping a cold tear from her wasted cheek, “My stroke is heavier than my groaning!”