The soft, exquisitely feminine tones of this
involuntary burst of pleasure, sounded in the ears of Ruth like a knell
over the moral beauty of her child. Still subduing her feelings, she
passed a hand thoughtfully over her own pallid brow, and appeared to muse
long on the desolation of a mind that had once promised to be so pure.
The colonists had not yet severed all those natural ties which bound them
to the eastern hemisphere. Their legends, their pride, and in many
instances their memories, aided in keeping alive a feeling of amity, and
it might be added of faith, in favor of the land of their ancestors. With
some of their descendants, even to the present hour, the _beau ideal_ of
excellence, in all that pertains to human qualities and human happiness,
is connected with the images of the country from which they sprung.
Distance is known to cast a softening mist, equally over the moral and
physical vision. The blue outline of mountain which melts into its glowing
background of sky, is not more pleasing than the pictures which fancy
sometimes draws of less material things; but, as he draws near, the
disappointed traveller too often finds nakedness and deformity, where he
so fondly imagined beauty only was to be seen.
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