unblighted name; for her guilt was unknown, and her virtues are yet
recorded in the memories of the Poor.

They laid her in the stately vaults of her ancient line, and her bier was
honoured with tears from hearts not less stricken, because their sorrow,
if violent, was brief. For the dead there are many mourners, but only
one monument--the bosom which loved them best. The spot where the hearse
rested, the green turf beneath, the surrounding trees, the gray tower of
the village church, and the proud halls rising beyond,--all had witnessed
the childhood, the youth, the bridal-day of the being whose last rites
and solemnities they were to witness now. The very bell which rang for
her birth had rung also for the marriage peal; it now tolled for her
death. But a little while, and she had gone forth from that home of her
young and unclouded years, amidst the acclamations and blessings of all,
a bride, with the insignia of bridal pomp--in the first bloom of her
girlish beauty--in the first innocence of her unawakened heart, weeping,
not for the future she was entering, but for the past she was about to
leave, and smiling through her tears, as if innocence had no business
with grief. On the same spot, where he had then waved his farewell,
stood the father now. On the grass which they had then covered, flocked
the peasants whose wants her childhood had relieved; by the same priest
who had blessed her bridals, bent the bridegroom who had plighted its
vow. There was not a tree, not a blade of grass withered. The day
itself was bright and glorious; such was it when it smiled upon her
nuptials. And size--she-but four little years, and all youth's innocence
darkened, and earth's beauty come to dust! Alas! not for her, but the
mourner whom she left! In death even love is forgotten; but in life
there is no bitterness so utter as to feel everything is unchanged,
except the One Being who was the soul of all--to know the world is the
same, but that its sunshine is departed.