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There was a trembling all over her, body and soul. She was shaken by the ordeal through which she had come the ordeal which was not hers but another's: and with the artlessness of the child was mingled that supreme human instinct which struggles to disarm Fate by immediate prostration and submission.
The artlessness of these verses renders them none the less significant. They express a popular sentiment in popular language. But, as here expressed, it is clearly the sentiment of the North: how far is it shared and acknowledged by the South? Happening to be on the spot, I could not but try to obtain some sort of answer to this question.
But one must say something to show how in all good composition the mechanical principles at the basis of the matter are subordinate to a vital principle on which the life in the work depends. This concealment of all artifice, this artlessness and spontaneity of appearance, is one of the greatest qualities in a composition, any analysis of which is futile.
It is bewildering, because it is a postscript, added, with a singular artlessness, after the Gospel has come to a full close. Perhaps St John did not even write it, though the pretty childlike conclusion about the world itself not being able to contain the books that might be written about Christ has always seemed to me to be in his spirit, the words of a very simple-minded and aged man.
Let us examine into this, and observe the exquisitely artful artlessness of the plan. At the extreme left end of the picture are a couple of women, one of them with a child looking over her shoulder at a wounded man sitting with bandaged head on the ground.
From this, after a time, he recovered, and said, "Your tale, Huntly, is true; yet, did I not see you before me, were I not acquainted with the artlessness and rectitude of your character, and, above all, had not my own experience, during the last three days, confirmed every incident, I should question its truth.
He who hath never seen the lightning hath no dread of it. I had not thought there was in the world so much artlessness, with all the power of perfect art. But we live to be wiser. Thou shalt continue in thy tale. Thou hast seen Mary, once Queen of France, now Queen of Scots answer me fairly; without if, or though, or any sort of doubt, the questions I shall put.
She had all the natural grace of sweetness of temper and artlessness in herself. I have done very little." "If it were admissible to contradict a lady," said the gallant Mr. Elton "I have perhaps given her a little more decision of character, have taught her to think on points which had not fallen in her way before." "Exactly so; that is what principally strikes me.
It was strikingly characteristic of him that, with all his intense ambition, his resolute desire to use a phrase which we have heard him apply to himself "to rise above the crowd, and stand when others fall," he chose for his wife a young provincial actress, whom he had once chided for her inattention or inability, but whose artlessness of manner, purity and sweetness of nature and aptness for improvement so enlisted his sympathies that he constituted himself her friend and guide until the death of her father and brother awakened a still warmer solicitude, bringing with it the discovery that "love had been the inspiration of all the counsel and assistance he had rendered her."
Something, however, he evidently lacked. Still he smiled, always in love with that young woman of twenty-four years, delicate, slender, and full of the fears and artlessness of a child.
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