Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/192

192 We must be permitted to adduce one or two other circumstances, tending to strengthen the probability we have dwelt upon, that the death, though lamentable and sudden, occurred under natural circumstances. At seasons of strong mental excitement, or of much bodily exhaustion, L. E. L. had been not merely subject to spasmodic affections, but had been known to sink down in fainting fits, so deep and instantaneous, as to create, for some minutes possibly, the most natural apprehensions, that death had taken place, or that life, if not quite extinct, was beyond hope. But a very few months before she left England, being then weak in body, a sudden emotion overpowered her in this way; and the lady who saw her fall, and flew to aid her, with all a mother's alarm and interest, has stated to us her well-founded impressions, that the thread of life was then almost snapped, and that had the shock been in the least degree more violent, or the frame been but a little more reduced and weakened, the catastrophe over which so many have wept, would have been mourned months earlier. Such fits as these may have occurred but once or twice previous to her departure; but there is small reason to doubt that they were all but fatal, and it is certain that the insensibility wore, in an unusual degree, the aspect of death. We must remember that, with much mental excitement, there was extreme bodily exhaustion, at the time of her decease.

And now, let us turn to those letters, addressed to her brother and to Mrs. Thomson, in which she makes mention of some new symptoms of bodily illness; though, accustomed as she was to frequent pain, and strong in the endurance of it, she passes them by slightly enough. To the former she