ABSTRACT
The sudden change which took place in the feelings and prospects of Margaret was of the most memorable nature. It was like a reprieve to the unfortunate wretch who has already mounted the scaffold. It was like the unexpected announcement of favourable symptoms to the sick man who has received his last absolution, and passed through the sacrament of the extreme unction. This person has in supposition entered the mournful portal through which all mortals must pass; he has shaken hands with hope; he is satisfied that help is vain; he has dismissed the illusions of the world; the grave has opened its jaws to receive / him. The muscles of his countenance are fallen; upon his eye-balls rest the sadness of a compelled resignation. If then unexpected tidings of gladness reach his ear, what music is there in the sound! It has the long-drawn, delicious melody of the Lydian lyre. a He believes that he shall once again behold the blue heavens and the green earth, breathe the breath of health, and scent the fragrance of the morning air. He apprehended that he had done with all things sublunary, and persuaded himself that they had no longer any beauty to his spirit. But how is every thing changed in a moment! A new life has descended upon him. It is the birth not of an unconscious infant, but the regeneration of a matured humanity, of a creature who knows, and knows the more perfectly because he believed the whole at an end, the joys of sensation, of thought, of reflection, of a conscious being, admitted to mix once / more in the activity, and hopes, and busy scene of things below.
