University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.

The commencement of our third summer was marked by
an event very sad to our little self-exiled company in the
woods—the death of Mrs. Glenville.

Were all here said affection prompts and truth warrants,
a volume might be easily written, interesting to most, but
specially to that comparatively small yet most excellent class
known as religious people: for never had such a brighter
ornament or safer pattern. No one, except the inspired
person who first gave the exhortation, could more truly have
said with her lips to her friends as she did by her life—“Be
ye followers of me as I am of Christ.” But none ever
was so unwilling to appropriate that or similar expressions:
she was too pious, too humble and meek, and childlike ever
to think her lovely temper, resigned spirit, and disinterested
goodness to be, as they were, a bright and burning light.

In early life she was said to be surpassingly beautiful.
But danger and temptation from beauty were soon prevented;
in the midst of her bloom her enchanting face was for

ever marred by the fearful traces of the small-pox. Yet
spite of this, and even in advanced life, rare was it to behold
a countenance more agreeable than hers; in which
was the blended expression of pleasing features, benevolent
feeling, pure sentiment, and heavenly temper. The
original beauty of the countenance had seemingly been
transferred to the heart; whence it beamed afresh from the
face, refined, chastened, renovated. Her person was tall
and finely proportioned; and so imposing her mien, from a
native dignity of soul, that had her original beauty remained,
Mrs. Glenville must have always appeared a Grace.

She was well educated and extensively read in history,
and many other important secular subjects, but her chief
reading had always been that best of books—the Bible:
indeed, to this, during the last few years of her sorrowful
life, her whole attention was given. She, however, read
now one other book—a book we name, although with no
expectation of its obtaining favour in an unreflecting age—
“Ambrose's looking unto Jesus.” And these two books,
in the latter months of her life, owing to the nature of her
disease, she read on her knees! That disease was an
aneurism of the femoral artery, of long continuance, and towards
the last exceedingly painful—and which, from an
early period of its existence had been pronounced fatal.
Yet all this created in her no alarm, produced not the slightest
murmur, and abated not her customary cheerfulness and
playful vivacity. Nay, she tried even to comfort and encourage
our little settlement—being really more joyous in
anticipation of a removal to the better land, than we could
have been in returning from exile to vast temporal possessions
and a beauteous earthly home!

Reason was unimpaired till within a very few moments
of death; and we all stood around her bed in the rude
cabin, while she, placing her hands on the heads of her
grandchildren, offered a solemn prayer for their welfare;

—and then, with an interrupted voice of the utmost tenderness,
she, looking on us for the last, and smiling, said—“I
am dying—all—peace!” The king of terrors was there
—to her an Angel of beauty—to us dark and frightful!—
and he rudely shook that dear frail tabernacle with a severe,
perhaps a painful convulsion! But that loved heart, after
one throe of agony, was still!—a deep sigh breathed from
the quivering lips—and she was not, for God had taken
her! A blood ransomed and sanctified spirit was in its
true home!

Two days after we laid her in a lone and forest grave.
And there all were mourners; none walked in that procession
of the dead but the people of Glenville—brothers, sisters,
children! In that solitary spot we laid her, far away
from consecrated ground and the graves of our fathers!

But what! though night after night around that spot was
heard the melancholy howl of the wild beast!--what!
though the great world knows not, cares not to know of that
leaf-covered grave! The dust that slumbers there shall
live again—and die no more! Better far lie in an unknown
grave and rise to the resurrection of the just, than under a
sculptured monument amid the lofty mausoleums of kings,
if one thence must rise to die the endless death!