I removed to Trevecca; it was a spacious mansion at the foot of a
stupendous mountain, which, from its form, was called the Sugar-loaf. A
part of the building was converted into a flannel manufactory, and the
inhabitants were of the Huntingdonian school. Here I enjoyed the sweet
repose of solitude; here I wandered about woods entangled by the wild
luxuriance of nature, or roved upon the mountain's side, while the blue
vapours floated around its summit. Oh, God of Nature! Sovereign of the
universe of wonders! in those interesting moments how fervently did I
adore thee!
How often have I sat at my little parlour window and watched the pale
moonbeams darting amidst the sombre and venerable yew-trees that shed
their solemn shade over the little garden! How often have I strolled
down the woody paths, spangled with the dew of morning, and shaken off
the briery branches that hung about me! How tranquil did I feel, escaped
from kindred tyranny, and how little did I regret the busy scenes of
fashionable folly! Unquestionably the Creator formed me with a strong
propensity to adore the sublime and beautiful of his works! But it has
never been my lot to meet with an associating mind, a congenial spirit,
who could (as it were abstracted from the world) find a universe in the
sacred intercourse of soul, the sublime union of sensibility.
At Trevecca House I was tranquil, if not perfectly happy. I there
avoided the low taunts of uncultivated natures, the insolent vulgarity
of pride, and the overbearing triumphs of a family, whose loftiest
branch was as inferior to my stock as the small weed is beneath the
tallest tree that overshades it. I had formed a union with a family who
had neither sentiment nor sensibility; I was doomed to bear the society
of ignorance and pride; I was treated as though I had been the most
abject of beings, even at a time when my conscious spirit soared as far
above their powers to wound it as the mountain towered over the white
battlements of my then solitary habitation.
After my removal to Trevecca, I seldom saw Miss Robinson or Mrs. Molly;
Mr. Harris never called on me, though I was not more than a mile and a
half from Tregunter. At length the expected, though to me most perilous,
moment arrived, which awoke a new and tender interest in my bosom, which
presented to my fondly beating heart my child,--my Maria. I cannot
describe the sensations of my soul at the moment when I pressed the
little darling to my bosom, my maternal bosom; when I kissed its hands,
its cheeks, its forehead, as it nestled closely to my heart, and seemed
to claim that affection which has never failed to warm it. She was the
most beautiful of infants! I thought myself the happiest of mothers; her
first smile appeared like something celestial,--something ordained to
irradiate my dark and dreary prospect of existence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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