Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/166

166 what a resource writing is. This ship brings home the first volume of a novel, and a series of papers, the 'Essays on the Female Characters in Walter Scott,' which Heath will publish from next January, a number every fortnight. I have especially begged that they may be sent to you, as it is a work about which I shall be anxious for your opinion. If my literary success does but continue, in two or three years I shall have an independence from embarrassment it is long since I have known. It will enable me comfortably to provide for my mother. * *  *  Mr. Maclean, besides what he did in England, leaves my literary pursuits quite in my own hands, and this will enable me to do all for my family that I could wish. I treat you, you see, with all my old confidence. I hope you will write to me; you can form no idea of the value of anything English here. Do send me any paper that you do not care about; here it will be invaluable. Tell me any chance of my tragedy, since you and Sir Edward Bulwer are its godfathers; but, most of all, tell me that you remember "Yours, most cordially, ""

Alluding, in another letter to the perpetual dash on the rocks, she says:—

"One wave comes up after another, and is for ever dashed in pieces, like human hopes, that only swell to be disappointed. We advance—up springs the shining froth of love or hope; 'a moment white, then gone for ever.'"

But this must be construed as the vein poetical; for, instead of hopes disappointed, she was experiencing a pleasant surprise that the pestilential