Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 | Page 4

his child by the system he adopted of requiring her
to recite her tasks on his return home at night, which was frequently
very late. Hence a premature development of the brain, which, while it
made her a youthful prodigy by day--one such youthful prodigy, it has
been justly said, is often the pest of a whole neighbourhood--rendered
her the nightly victim of spectral illusions, somnambulism, &c.;
checked her growth; and eventually brought on continual headaches,
weakness, and various nervous affections. As soon as the light was
removed from her chamber at night, this ill-tended girl was haunted by
colossal faces, that advanced slowly towards her, the eyes dilating, and
each feature swelling loathsomely as they came; till at last, when they
were about to close upon her, she started up with a shriek, which drove
them away, but only to return when she lay down again. 'No wonder
the child arose and walked in her sleep, moaning all over the house, till
once, when they heard her, and came and waked her, and she told what
she had dreamed, her father sharply bade her "leave off thinking of
such nonsense, or she would be crazy"--never knowing that he was
himself the cause of all these horrors of the night.' Her home seems to
have been deficient in the charms and associations appropriate to
childhood. Finding no relief from without, her already overexcited
mind was driven for refuge from itself to the world of books. She tells
us she was taught Latin and English grammar at the same time; in Latin,
which she began to read at six years old, her father, and subsequently a
tutor, trained her to a high degree of precision, expecting her to
understand the mechanism of the language thoroughly, and to translate
it tersely and unhesitatingly, with the definite clearness of one perfectly
au fait in the philosophy of the classics. Thus she became imbued with
an abiding interest in the genius of old Rome--'the power of will, the
dignity of a fixed purpose'--where man takes a 'noble bronze in camps
and battle-fields,' his brow well furrowed by the 'wrinkles of council,'
and his eye 'cutting its way like the sword;' and thence she loved to
escape, at Ovid's behest, to the enchanted gardens of the Greek
mythology, to the gods and nymphs born of the sunbeam, the wave, the
shadows on the hill--delighted to realise in those Greek forms the faith
of a refined and intense childhood. Reading was now to her a habit and

a passion. Its only rival attraction was the 'dear little garden' behind the
house, where the best hours of her lonely child-life were spent. Within
the house, everything, she says, was socially utilitarian; her books told
of a proud world, but in another temper were the teachings of the little
garden, where her thoughts could lie callow in the nest, and only be fed
and kept warm, not called to fly or sing before the time. A range of blue
hills, at about twelve miles' distance, allured her to reverie, and bred
within her thoughts not too deep for tears. The books which exercised
most power over her at this period were Shakspeare, Cervantes, and
Molière--all three students of the 'natural history of man,' and inspired
by fact, not fancy; reconstructing the world from materials which they
collected on every side, not spinning from the desires of their own
special natures; and accordingly teaching her, their open-eyed disciple,
to distrust all invention which is not based on a wide experience, but, as
she confesses, also doing her harm, since the child, fed with meat
instead of milk, becomes too soon mature. For a few months, this
bookish life was interrupted, or varied, by the presence of an English
lady, whom Margaret invested with ideal perfections as her 'first
friend,' and whom she worshipped as a star from the east--a
morning-star; and at whose departure she fell into a profound
depression. Her father sought to dispel this rooted melancholy, by
sending her to school--a destiny from which her whole nature revolted,
as something alien to its innermost being and cherished associations.
To school, however, she went, and at first captivated, and then
scandalised her fellow-pupils by her strange ways. Now, she surprised
them by her physical faculty of rivalling the spinning dervishes of the
East--now, by declaiming verses, and acting a whole répertoire of parts,
both laughter-raising and tear-compelling--now, by waking in the night,
and cheating her restlessness by inventions that alternately diverted and
teased her companions. She was always devising means to infringe
upon the school-room routine. This involved her at last in a trouble,
from which she was only extricated by the judicious tenderness of her
teacher--the circumstances attending which 'crisis' are detailed at length
in her story of