unwavering step, ascended the pulpit stairs. The quiverings of
incipient harmony were hushed, and the divine sat in speechless
and almost terrified astonishment, while she undid the door, and
stood up in the sacred desk from which his maledictions had just
been thundered. She then divested herself of the cloak and hood,
and appeared in a most singular array. A shapeless robe of
sackcloth was girded about her waist with a knotted cord; her
raven hair fell down upon her shoulders, and its blackness was
defiled by pale streaks of ashes, which she had strown upon her
head. Her eyebrows, dark and strongly defined, added to the
deathly whiteness of a countenance, which, emaciated with want,
and wild with enthusiasm and strange sorrows, retained no trace
of earlier beauty. This figure stood gazing earnestly on the
audience, and there was no sound, nor any movement, except a
faint shuddering which every man observed in his neighbor, but
was scarcely conscious of in himself. At length, when her fit of
inspiration came, she spoke, for the first few moments, in a low
voice, and not invariably distinct utterance. Her discourse gave
evidence of an imagination hopelessly entangled with her reason;
it was a vague and incomprehensible rhapsody, which, however,
seemed to spread its own atmosphere round the hearer's soul, and
to move his feelings by some influence unconnected with the
words. As she proceeded, beautiful but shadowy images would
sometimes be seen, like bright things moving in a turbid river;
or a strong and singularly-shaped idea leaped forth, and seized
at once on the understanding or the heart. But the course of her
unearthly eloquence soon led her to the persecutions of her sect,
and from thence the step was short to her own peculiar sorrows.
She was naturally a woman of mighty passions, and hatred and
revenge now wrapped themselves in the garb of piety; the