human prey is foredoomed for destruction, not by the single sorrow,
but the thousand cares: it may baffle one race of pursuers, but a new
succeeds; as fast as some drop off exhausted, others spring up to
renew and to perpetuate the chase; and the fated, though flying victim
never escapes but in death. There was a faint smile upon his
daughter's lip, as Mordaunt bent down to kiss it; the dark lash rested
on the snowy lid--ah, that tears had no well beneath its surface!---
and her breath stole from her rich lips with so regular and calm a
motion that, like the "forest leaves," it "seemed stirred with
prayer!" [And yet the forest leaves seem stirred with prayer.--
BYRON.] One arm lay over the coverlet, the other pillowed her head,
in the unrivalled grace of infancy.

Mordaunt stooped once more, for his heart filled as he gazed upon his
child, to kiss her cheek again, and to mingle a blessing with the
kiss. When he rose, upon that fair smooth face there was one bright
and glistening drop; and Isabel stirred in sleep, and, as if suddenly
vexed by some painful dream, she sighed deeply as she stirred. It was
the last time that the cheek of the young and predestined orphan was
ever pressed by a father's kiss or moistened by a father's tear! He
left the room silently; no sooner had he left it, than, as if without
the precincts of some charmed and preserving circle, the chill and
presentiment at his heart returned. There is a feeling which perhaps
all have in a momentary hypochondria felt at times: it is a strong and
shuddering impression which Coleridge has embodied in his own dark and
supernatural verse, that something not of earth is behind us; that if
we turned our gaze backward we should behold that which would make the
heart as a bolt of ice, and the eye shrivel and parch within its
socket. And so intense is the fancy that when we turn, and all is
void, from that very void we could shape a spectre, as fearful as the