or despair.

Everything was beautiful in the history of unhappy Jane Sinclair's
melancholy fate. The evening of the incident to which the fair girl's
misery might eventually be traced was one of the most calm and balmy
that could be witnessed even during the leafy month of June. With the
exception of Mrs. Sinclair, the whole family had gone out to saunter
leisurely by the river side; the father between his two eldest
daughters, and Jane, then sixteen, sometimes chatting to her brother
William, and sometimes fondling a white dove, which she had petted and
trained with such success that it was then amenable to almost every
light injunction she laid upon it. It sat upon her shoulder, which,
indeed, was its usual seat, would peck her cheek, cower as if with a
sense of happiness in her bosom, and put its bill to her lips, from
which it was usually fed, either to demand some sweet reward for its
obedience, or to express its attachment by a profusion of innocent
caresses. The evening, as we said, was fine; not a cloud could be seen,
except a pile of feathery flakes that hung far up at the western gate
of heaven; the stillness was profound; no breathing even of the gentlest
zephyr, could be felt; the river beside them, which was here pretty
deep, seemed motionless; not a leaf of the trees stirred; the very
aspens were still as if they had been marble; and the whole air was warm
and fragrant. Although the sun wanted an hour of setting, yet from the
bottom of the vale they could perceive the broad shafts of light which
shot from his mild disk through the snowy clouds we have mentioned, like
bars of lambent radiance, almost palpable to the touch. Yet, although
this delightful silence was so profound, the heart could perceive,
beneath its stillest depths, that voiceless harmony of progressing life,
which, like the music of a dream, can reach the soul independently of
the senses, and pour upon it a sublime sense of natural inspiration.