The expression was at once amiable and intellectual--mellowed or blended, however, with a pensiveness which is usually but most erroneously called melancholy. Melancholy had nothing to do with a "mind at peace with all below--a heart, whose love was innocent." The countenance, in general, affords an index of the mental character--it takes its "form and pressure," as it were, from the predominant workings of that inward principle which is the source of thought and feeling. It is there that thought and feeling, those subtle essences, are made visible to the eye--it is there that mind may be seen. The most casual observer could not fail to perceive that the soul which spoke eloquently in the eye, "and sweetly lightened o'er the face" of May Darling, was a worshipper of nature, of poetry, and of virtue; for they are often combined--they have a natural relation to each other; and, when they exist simultaneously in one individual, a mind so constituted has a capacity for enjoying the most exalted pleasure of which humanity is susceptible. May Darling was indeed imaginative and sanguine in a very high degree; and books of a romantic or dramatic character were mines of "untold wealth" to her. "Many are poets who have never penned Their inspirations." And, although the name of this rural beauty, this humble village-maiden, will be looked for in vain in the rolls of fame, she enjoyed hours of intense poetical inspiration. In short, both in her mental character, and in the style of her personal attractions, she rose far above her companions of the village. Need it be told that often, of a fine evening, she would steal away from her gay, romping, laughing associates, and, with a favourite author in her hand, and wrapt in a vision of "_sweet_ coming fancies," follow the course of the stream which intersected her native vale, flowing along, pure and noiseless, like the current of her own existence?