fancy a _tiara_ of light or a gleaming aureola [4] in token of thy
premature intellectual grandeur,--thou whose head, for its superb
developments, was the astonishment of science, [5]--thou next, but after
an interval of happy years, thou also wert summoned away from our
nursery; and the night, which for me gathered upon that event, ran after
my steps far into life; and perhaps at this day I resemble little for
good or for ill that which else I should have been. Pillar of fire that
didst go before me to guide and to quicken,--pillar of darkness, when
thy countenance was turned away to God, that didst too truly reveal to
my dawning fears the secret shadow of death,--by what mysterious
gravitation was it that _my_ heart had been drawn to thine? Could a
child, six years old, place any special value upon intellectual
forwardness? Serene and capacious as my sister's mind appeared to me
upon after review, was _that_ a charm for stealing away the heart of
an infant? O, no! I think of it _now_ with interest, because it lends,
in a stranger's ear, some justification to the excess of my fondness.
But then it was lost upon me; or, if not lost, was perceived only
through its effects. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister, not the less
I must have loved thee, having that capacious heart--overflowing, even
as mine overflowed, with tenderness; stung, even as mine was stung,
by the necessity of loving and being loved. This it was which crowned
thee with beauty and power.

"Love, the holy sense,
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense."

That lamp of paradise was, for myself, kindled by reflection from the
living light which burned so steadfastly in thee; and never but to
thee, never again since _thy_ departure, had I power or temptation,
courage or desire, to utter the feelings which possessed me. For I was