Personal Recollections | Page 5

brilliant were the flashes resulting from such occasional collision with antagonists of that calibre. I am often charged with the offence of being too political in my writings: the fact is, I write as I think and feel; and what else can you expect from a child reared in such a nursery?
But another consequence of this temporary visitation was an increased passion for music. The severe remedies used for my blindness frequently laid me on the sofa for days together, and then my fond father would bring home with him, after the afternoon service of the cathedral, of which he was also a canon, a party of the young choristers. My godfather would seat himself at the harpsichord; the boys, led by my father, performed the vocal parts; and such feasts of sacred music were served up to me, that I have breathed to my brother in an ecstatic whisper the confession, "I don't want to see; I like music better than seeing."
That brother I have not before named; but that only brother was a second self. Not that he resembled me in any respect, for he was beautiful to a prodigy, and I an ordinary child; he was wholly free from any predilection for learning, being mirthful and volatile in the highest degree; and though he listened when I read to him the mysterious marvels of my favorite nursery books, I doubt whether he ever bestowed an after- thought on any thing therein contained. The brightest, the sweetest, the most sparkling creature that ever lived, he was all joy, all love. I do not remember to have seen him for one moment out of temper or out of spirits for the first sixteen years of his life; and he was to me what the natural sun is to the system. We were never separated; our studies, our plays, our walks, our plans, our hearts were always one. That holy band which the Lord has woven, that inestimable blessing of fraternal love and confidence, was never broken, never loosened between us, from the cradle to his grave; and God forbid that I should say or think that the grave has broken it. If I have not from the outset included that precious brother in my sketch, it was because I should almost as soon have deemed it necessary to include by name my own head or my own heart. He too was musical, and sang sweetly, and I cannot look back on my childhood without confessing that its cup ran over with the profusion of delights that my God poured into it.
About this time, when my sight, after a few months' privation, was fully restored, I first imbibed the strength of Protestantism as deeply as it can be imbibed apart from spiritual understanding, Norwich was infamously conspicuous in persecuting unto death the saints of the Most High, under the sanguinary despotism of popish Mary; and the spot where they suffered, called the Lollard's pit, lies just outside the town, over Bishop's bridge, having a circular excavation against the side of Moushold-hill. This, at least to within a year or two ago, was kept distinct, an opening by the road-side. My father often took us to walk in that direction, and pointed out the pit, and told us that there Mary burnt good people alive for refusing to worship wooden images. I was horror-stricken, and asked many questions, to which he did not always reply so fully as I wished; and one day, having to go out while I was inquiring, he said, "I don't think you can read a word of this book, but you may look at the pictures: it is all about the martyrs." So saying, he placed on a chair the old folio of Foxe's Acts and Monuments, in venerable black-letter, and left me to examine it.
Hours passed and still found me bending over, or rather leaning against that magic book. I could not, it is true, decipher the black-letter, but I found some explanations in Roman type, and devoured them; while every wood-cut was examined with aching eyes and a palpitating heart. Assuredly I took in more of the spirit of John Foxe, even by that imperfect mode of acquaintance, than many do by reading his book through; and when my father next found me at what became my darling study, I looked up at him with burning cheeks and asked, "Papa, may I be a martyr?"
"What do you mean, child?"
"I mean, papa, may I be burned to death for my religion, as these were? I want to be a martyr."
He smiled, and made me this answer, which I have never forgotten: "Why, Charlotte, if the government ever gives power to the Papists again, as they talk of doing, you may probably live to be a