 had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed
her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement 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 splendor 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
