Happy for her that she was in Protestant and common-sense England, and
in a country parish, where mesmerism and spirit-rapping were unknown.
Had she been an American, she might have become one of the most
lucrative "mediums;" had she been born in a Romish country, she would
have probably become an even more famous personage. There is no reason
why she should not have equalled or surpassed, the ecstasies of St.
Theresa, or of St. Hildegardis, or any other sweet dreamer of sweet
dreams; have founded a new order of charity, have enriched the clergy
of a whole province, and have died in seven years, maddened by
alternate paroxysms of self-conceit and revulsions of self-abasement.
Her own preachers and class-leaders, indeed (so do extremes meet),
would not have been sorry to make use of her in somewhat the same
manner, however feebly and coarsely: but her innate self-respect and
modesty had preserved her from the snares of such clumsy poachers; and
more than one good-looking young preacher had fled desperately from a
station where, instead of making a tool of Grace Harvey, he could only
madden his own foolish heart with love for her.
So Grace had reigned upon her pretty little throne of not unbearable
sorrows, till a real and bitter woe came; one which could not be
hugged and cherished, like the rest; one which she tried to fling from
her, angrily, scornfully, and found to her horror, that, instead of
her possessing it, it possessed her, and coiled itself round her
heart, and would not be flung away.
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