and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before the public eye.  So magnificent was the small figure when thus arrayed, and such was the splendour of Pearl’s own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her on the darksome cottage floor.  And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child’s rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect.  Pearl’s aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess.  Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and if in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself—­it would have been no longer Pearl!

This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various properties of her inner life.  Her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but—­or else Hester’s fears deceived her—­it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into which she was born.  The child could not be made amenable to rules.  In giving her existence a great law had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered.  Hester could only account for the child’s character—­and even then most vaguely and imperfectly—­by recalling what she herself had been during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing her soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material of earth.  The mother’s impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light of the intervening substance.  Above all, the warfare of Hester’s spirit at that epoch was perpetuated in Pearl.  She could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart.  They were now illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child’s disposition, but, later in the day of earthly existence, might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind.