My first cause of sorrow was parting with my brother--"my guide, my companion, my familiar friend." He was sent to a distant college, and I felt for a while as if I were alone in the world, for my father was in public life, and it was only at evening he had leisure to indulge in the tenderness of domestic feeling. He had never given up the hope that I might recover my sight. When I was very small there was an operation performed upon my eyes, but it was by an unskilful oculist, and unsuccessful. After this I had an unspeakable dread of any future attempt,--the slightest allusion to the subject threw me into such nervous agitation, my father at last forbore to mention it. "Let me live and die under this shade," I would say, "like the flower that blooms in the cleft of the rock. The sunshine and the dew are not for me." Time glided away. In one year more Henry would complete his collegiate course. I was in the morning of womanhood, but my helpless condition preserved to me all the privileges and indulgences of the child. It was at this era--why did I here dash aside my pen, and press my hands upon my temples to still the throbbings of a thousand pulses, starting simultaneously into motion? Why cannot we always be children? Why was I not suffered to remain blind?--A young physician came into the neighbourhood, who had already acquired some fame as an oculist. He visited in our family--he became almost identified with our household. Philanthropy guided him in his choice of a profession. He knew himself gifted with extraordinary talents, and that he had it in his power to mitigate the woes of mankind. But though the votary of duty, he was a worshipper at the shrine of intellect and taste. He loved poetry, and, next to music, it was my passion. He read to me the melodious strains of the sons of song, in a voice more eloquent, in its low depth of sweetness, than the minstrels whose harmony he breathed. When I touched the keys of the piano, his voice was raised, in unison with mine. If I wandered in the garden, his hand was ever ready to guide, and his arm to sustain me. He brought me the wild-flower of the field, and the exotic of the green-house, and, as he described their hues and outlines, I scarcely regretted the want of vision. Here, in this book, I have pressed each faded gift. I remember the very words he uttered when he gave me this cluster.--"See," said he, "nay, _feel_ this upright stem, so lofty, till bending from the weight of the flower it bears. It is a lily--I plucked it from the margin of a stream, in which it seemed gazing on its white, waxen leaves. Touch gently the briars of this wild rose. Thus heaven guards the innocence and beauty that gladdens the eyes of the wayfaring man. Cecilia, would you not like to look upon these flowers?" "Yes, but far rather on the faces of those I love--my father's--my brother's. Man is made in the image of his Maker, and his face must be divine." "Oh!"