Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/152

152 "This was the last I saw of a sister, endeared to me by every tie of grateful affection; of affection never, that I know of, broken for an hour. Many will be ready to give assurance of the private worth, the frank and confiding generosity of her disposition, but to this no one can be a surer witness, or with deeper reason, than myself. In the purposes to which she devoted the fruits of her laborious life, self was ever forgotten, and her industry, I believe, to have been unparalleled. Others are far better able than I am to speak of her as L. E. L., but my anxious testimony to the genuine goodness of her heart will not, I trust, be thought out of place; for, indeed, it springs not from any fond partiality, but is based upon the experience of my life. In childhood, and in after years, in every vicissitude of fortune, both when under severe family trials, she was gaining the rewards of literature, or when amid her success she had to pay the penalties which a woman hazards when she passes beyond the pale of private life, she was still the same—unselfish, high-minded, affectionate.

There is yet one farewell to be added. Though not the last, in point of time, it is reserved until now, because it expresses all of hope that she who uttered it was capable of feeling, and all of memory which she most cared to cherish. No farewell ever came more fondly from the heart, and poetry was never more entirely the organ of truth than here. It may be said also, that gratitude and fondness could not have been more amply earned than by the generous lady whose maternal kindness gave a happy home to L. E. L. during the