and large, expressive eyes, harmonious, aquiline features, and a
picturesque appearance. She wore her hair in abundant curls; she
exhaled an atmosphere of romance, of graceful and ardent emotions, and
of almost overpowering sentiment. In fact, she had a genuine gift for
expression and description, and she made an impression in contemporary
letters. We might smile now--and, in truth, we sometimes did
then--over some of her pages; but much of her work would still be
called good, if resuscitated from the dusty book-shelves of the past.
I remember one passage in her English Letters which was often quoted
in our family circle as a typical illustration of the intensity of the
period: "The first tears," wrote Grace, "that I had shed since leaving
my dear native land fell fast into the red heart of an English rose!"
Nothing could be better than that; but the volume was full of similar
felicities. You were swimming in radiant tides of enthusiastic
appreciation, quotations from the poets and poetical rhapsodies;
incidents of travel, humorous, pathetic, and graphic; swirling eddies
of word-painting, of moral and ethical and historical reflection;
withal, an immense, amiable, innocent, sprawling temperament. And as
was her book, so was Grace herself; indeed, if any one could outdo the
book in personal conversation, Grace was that happy individual. What
she accomplished when she embarked, full-sailed, upon the topic of The
Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables may be pictured to
themselves by persons endowed with the rudiments of imagination; I
must not attempt to adorn this sober page with an attempted
reproduction of the scene. Mortal language reeled and cracked under
the strain of giving form to her admiration; but it was so honest and
well meant that it could not but give pleasure even in the midst of
bewilderment. My father bowed his head with a painful smile; but I
dare say it did him good when the ordeal was over.