Camilla | Page 2

it we must be born again. Its capacity o'er-leaps
all limit, while its futility includes every absurdity. It lives its own
surprise--it ceases to beat--and the void is inscrutable! In one grand and
general view, who can display such a portrait? Fairly, however faintly,
to delineate some of its features, is the sole and discriminate province
of the pen which would trace nature, yet blot out personality.
CHAPTER I.
A Family Scene

REPOSE is not more welcome to the worn and to the aged, to the sick
and to the unhappy, than danger, difficulty, and toil to the young and
adventurous. Danger they encounter but as the forerunner of success;
difficulty, as the spur of ingenuity; and toil, as the herald of honour.
The experience which teaches the lesson of truth, and the blessings of
tranquillity, comes not in the shape of warning nor of wisdom; from
such they turn aside, defying or disbelieving. 'Tis in the bitterness of
personal proof alone, in suffering and in feeling, in erring and in
repenting, that experience comes home with conviction, or impresses to
any use.
In the bosom of her respectable family resided Camilla. Nature, with a
bounty the most profuse, had been lavish to her of attractions; Fortune,
with a moderation yet kinder, had placed her between luxury and
indigence. Her abode was in the parsonage-house of Etherington,
beautifully situated in the unequal county of Hampshire, and in the
vicinity of the varied landscapes of the New Forest. Her father, the
rector, was the younger son of the house of Tyrold. The living, though
not considerable, enabled its incumbent to attain every rational object
of his modest and circumscribed wishes; to bestow upon a deserving
wife whatever her own forbearance declined not; and to educate a
lovely race of one son and three daughters, with that expansive
propriety, which unites improvement for the future with present
enjoyment.
In goodness of heart, and in principles of piety, this exemplary couple
was bound to each other by the most perfect unison of character,
though in their tempers there was a contrast which had scarce the
gradation of a single shade to smooth off its abrupt dissimilitude. Mr.
Tyrold, gentle with wisdom, and benign in virtue, saw with compassion
all imperfections but his own, and there doubled the severity which to
others he spared. Yet the mildness that urged him to pity blinded him
not to approve; his equity was unerring, though his judgment was
indulgent. His partner had a firmness of mind which nothing could
shake: calamity found her resolute; even prosperity was powerless to
lull her duties asleep. The exalted character of her husband was the
pride of her existence, and the source of her happiness. He was not

merely her standard of excellence, but of endurance, since her sense of
his worth was the criterion for her opinion of all others. This instigated
a spirit of comparison, which is almost always uncandid, and which
here could rarely escape proving injurious. Such, at its very best, is the
unskilfulness of our fallible nature, that even the noble principle which
impels our love of right, misleads us but into new deviations, when its
ambition presumes to point at perfection. In this instance, however,
distinctness of disposition stifled not reciprocity of affection--that
magnetic concentration of all marriage felicity;--Mr. Tyrold revered
while he softened the rigid virtues of his wife, who adored while she
fortified the melting humanity of her husband.
Thus, in an interchange of happiness the most deserved, and of parental
occupations the most promising, passed the first married years of this
blest and blessing pair. An event then came to pass extremely
interesting at the moment, and yet more important in its consequences.
This was the receipt of a letter from the elder brother of Mr. Tyrold,
containing information that he meant to remove into Hampshire.
Sir Hugh Tyrold was a baronet, who resided upon the hereditary estate
of the family in Yorkshire. He was many years older than Mr. Tyrold,
who had never seen him since his marriage; religious duties, prudence,
and domestic affairs having from that period detained him at his
benefice; while a passion for field sports had, with equal constancy,
kept his brother stationary.
The baronet began his letter with kind enquiries after the welfare of Mr.
Tyrold and his family, and then entered upon the state of his own
affairs, briefly narrating, that he had lost his health, and, not knowing
what to do with himself, had resolved to change his habitation, and
settle near his relations. The Cleves' estate, which he heard was just by
Etherington, being then upon sale, he desired his brother to make the
purchase for him out of hand; and then to prepare Mrs. Tyrold, with
whom he was yet unacquainted, though he took