Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/136

136 takes the subjoined as a specimen. Allowing, perhaps, for a superfluous dash of bitterness, Coleridge might have written it, smiling complacently on his work:— Not with the world to teach us, may we learn The spirit's noblest lessons. Hope and Faith Are stars that shine amid the far-off heaven, Dimm'd and obscured by vapours from below. Impatient selfishness, and shrewd distrust, Are taught us in the common ways of life. Dust is beneath our feet, and at our side The coarse and mean, the false and the unjust: And constant contact makes us grow too like The things we daily struggle with, and scorn. Only by looking up can we see heaven!"

Upon the completion of "Ethel Churchill" L. E. L. devoted herself to another work in prose, one which she had long meditated, and for which she had great requisites; that series of descriptive and critical essays on the female characters of Scott, which appears in these volumes. Two or three of them were printed separately, as they were written, in the "New Monthly Magazine" (they have since been revised), and an arrangement was then made with Mr. Charles Heath to publish these sketches in a volume, to be illustrated according to the fashion of the time. This design, in which she took so deep an interest, pursuing it steadily to the last, she did not live to complete; but what the work would have been may be judged of from the analyses of passion, truth, and beauty, now submitted to the public.

But there was one object which had, from a still earlier period, engaged her serious thoughts occasionally, and made her sigh for a fair opportunity of accomplishing it; an object to which, it must be confessed, the bent of her genius, and the habits