mixing, since her mother's death, with no companions of her age; catching
dim and solemn glimpses of her father's wild but lofty speculations; his
books, filled with strange characters and imposing "words of mighty
sound," open for ever to her young and curious gaze; it can scarce be
matter of wonder that something strange and unworldly mingled with the
elements of character which Lucilla Volktman early developed--a character
that was nature itself, yet of a nature erratic and bizarre. Her impulses
she obeyed spontaneously, but none fathomed their origin. She was not of
a quiet and meek order of mind; but passionate, changeful, and restless.
She would laugh and weep without apparent cause; and the colour on her
cheek never seemed for two minutes the same; and the most fitful changes
of an April heaven were immutability itself compared with the play and
lustre of expression that undulated in her features and her wild, deep,
eloquent eyes.

Her person resembled her mind; it was beautiful; but the beauty struck you
less than the singularity of its character. Her eyes were of a darkness
that at night seemed black; but her hair was of the brightest and purest
auburn; her complexion, sometimes pale, sometimes radiant even to the
flush of a fever, was delicate and clear; her teeth and mouth were lovely
beyond all words; her hands and feet were small to a fault; and as she
grew up (for we have forestalled her age in this description) her shape,
though wanting in height, was in such harmony and proportion, that the
mind of the sculptor would sometimes escape from the absorption of the
astrologer and Volktman would gaze upon her with the same admiration that
he would have bestowed, in spite of the subject, on the goddess-forms of
Phidias or Canova. But then, this beauty was accompanied with such
endless variety of gesture, often so wild, though always necessarily
graceful, that the eye ached for that repose requisite for prolonged
admiration.