The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

PEVERIL OF THE-I PEAK. 829
a delicacy of constitution, which cut off the little prattlers at the early age
when they most wind themselves around the heart of the parents.
In the beginning of the year 1658, Major Bridgenorth was childless; ere
it ended, he had a daughter, indeed, but her birth was purchased by the
death of an affectionate wife, whose constitutibon had been exhausted by
maternal grief, and by the anxious and harrowing reflection, that from her
the children they had lost derived that delicacy of health, which proved
unable to undergo the tear and wear of existence. The same voice which
told Bridgenorth that he was father of a living child, (:it was the friendly
voice of Lady Peveril,) communicated to him the melancholy intelligence
that he was no longer a husband. The feelings of Major Bridgenorth were
strong and deep, rather than hasty and vehement; and his grief assumed
the form of a sullen stupor, from which neither the friendly remonstrances
of Sir Geoffrey, who did not fail to be with his neighbour at this distressing
conjuncture, even though he knew he must meet the Presbyterian pastor,
nor the ghostly exhortations of this latter person, were able to rouse the
unfortunate widower.
At length Lady Peveril, with the ready invention of a female sharpened
by the sight of distress and the feelings of sympathy, tried on the sufferer
one of those experiments by which grief is often awakened from despondency into tears. She placed in Bridgenorth's arms the infant whose birth
had cost him so dear, and conjured him to remember that his Alice was not
yet dead, since she survived in the helpless child she had left to his paternal
care.
"Take her away -take her away!" said the unhappy man, and they
were the first words he had spoken; "let me not look on her -it is but
another blossom that has bloomed to fade, and the tree that bore it will
never flourish more!"
IHe almost threw the child into Lady Peveril's arms, placed his hands
before his face, and wept aloud. Lady Peveril did not say "be comforted,"
but she ventured to promise that the blossom should ripen to fruit.
"Never, never " said Bridgenorth; "take the unhappy child away, and
let me only know when I shall wear black for her - Wear black 1" he exclaimed, interrupting himself,'-' what other colour shall I wear during the
remainder of my life?"
" I will take the child for a season," said Lady Peveril, " since the sight
of her is so painful to you; and the little Alice shall share the nursery of
our Julian, until it shall be pleasure and not pain for you to look on her."
"That hour will never come," said the unhappy father; " her doom is
written-she will follow the rest —God's will be done. —Lady, I thank you
-I trust her to your care; and I thank God that my eye shall not see her
dying agonies.'"
Without detaining the reader's attention longer on this painful theme,
it is enough to say that the Lady Peveril did undertake the duties of a
mother to the little orphan; and perhaps it was owing, in a great measure,
to her judicious treatment of the infant, that its feeble hold of life was preserved, since the glimmering spark might probably have been altogether
smothered, had it, like the Major's former children, undergone the overcare and over-nursing of a mother rendered nervously cautious and anxious
by so many successive losses. The lady was the more ready to undertake
this charge, that she herself had lost two infant children; and that she
attributed the preservation of the third, now a fine healthy child of three
*years old, to Julian's being subjected to rather a different course of diet and
treatment than was then generally practised. She resolved to follow the
same regimen with the little orphan, which she had observed in the case of
her own boy; and it was equally successful. By a more sparing use cf
medicine, by a bolder admission of fresh air, by a firm, yet cautious auention to encourage rather than to supersede the exertions of nature, the puny
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