That this may prove my bounteous share, Ascends my ever constant prayer, To thee, all perfect mind; O aid me in the arduous strife, Through each perplexing maze of life, To all thy ways resign'd!] CHAPTER II. The scenes that once so brilliant shone are past, and can return no more to cheer the pensive heart; and memory recalls them with a tear; some lowering cloud succeeds, and all the gay delusive landscape fades. [On the Death of a Friend and Schoolfellow (here from "Poetical Essays" in _Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. 32, 1762), opening lines: Scarce rolls, alas! o'er mortal buds a year, But claims afresh the tributary tear: Soon each fair hope some lowering cloud invades, And all the gay delusive landscape fades.] While Alida remained at the village school, surrounded by the festive scenes of childhood, and pursuing her studies with assiduous emulation, with the hope of meriting, in future time, the praises of her fond parents, an unforeseen misfortune awaited her that no human foresight could have power to arrest. The health of her mother had been long declining, and her illness at this time increased so far as to render medical assistance useless, and baffled the skill of the ablest physicians. A trial so new, so afflicting, and so grievous to her youthful mind, to lose one of her honoured parents, and to be unexpectedly summoned to her parental home to receive the last benediction of a beloved mother, and at this early period of her life to be deprived of her kind care and protection, was unfortunate in the extreme. [["Baffled the skill of the ablest physicians" was a stock phrase.]] Every anxious solicitude and responsibility now rested alone upon a widowed father, who mourned deeply their common bereavement, while he felt conscious that all his fatherly care and caresses could never supply to Alida all the necessary requisitions that she had unhappily lost in so dear and interested a friend. When he observed her spirits languish, and the tear frequently starting in her eye, and her former sprightly countenance shaded with the deep tinges of melancholy, he saw that the cheerfulness and gaiety of her natural disposition had received a powerful check, which promised to be lasting. [["Sprightly" is a favorite adjective in _Alonzo and Melissa_; by the time of _Alida_ it was going out of fashion.]]