She forgot the cares of life and
was touched by all the sense of its enjoyment. To move, to
breathe, to feel the sunbeam, were sensible and surpassing
pleasures. Cheerful by nature, notwithstanding her stately
thoughts and solemn life, a brilliant smile played on her
seraphic face, as she marked the wild passage of the daring
birds, or watched the thoughtless grace of infancy.
She rested herself on a bench beneath a branching elm, and her
eye, that for some time had followed the various objects that
had attracted it, was now fixed in abstraction on the sunny
waters. The visions of past life rose before her. It was one
of those reveries when the incidents of our existence are
mapped before us, when each is considered with relation to the
rest, and assumes in our knowledge its distinct and absolute
position; when, as it were, we take stock of our experience,
and ascertain how rich sorrow and pleasure, feeling and
thought, intercourse with our fellow creatures and the
fortuitous mysteries of life,--have made us in wisdom.
The quick intelligence and the ardent imagination of Sybil had
made her comprehend with fervor the two ideas that had been
impressed on her young mind; the oppression of her church and
the degradation of her people.
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