Meditation, comparison, introspection, were wholly
foreign to this little, eager, impetuous nature, however they
might be forced upon it in the course of years and events; and
with her keen sense of enjoyment in all glad outward
influences, one might have feared that the realities of life
present to her would too readily preclude any contemplation of
its hidden possibilities, but for a lively, susceptible
imagination, which would surely intervene to prevent any such
tendency being carried out to its too prosaic end. It was
through appeals to her imagination and affection, rather than
to her reason and intellect, that Madeleine could be
influenced; and whatever large sympathies with humanity she
might acquire through life, whatever aspirations after a high
and noble ideal, whatever gleams of inspiration from the great
beyond that lies below the widest, as well as the narrowest
horizon, might visit her--all these would come to her, we may
fancy, through the exercise of pure instincts and a sensitive
imagination, rather than through the power of logical
deduction from given causes.
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