Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/213

Rh barbarous region, like that of Cape Coast Castle, is, of all places in the world, that which most needs jealous supervision. Savage life and despotic power are rude elements, whether in agreement or in collision. Such localities are the fitting haunts of oppressions, sufferings, and crimes, that could not exist in the sunshine of civilization. When, on what proved to be the last evening of her life, the departure of her only European attendant was announced to L. E. L., how completely were her own lines verified, I seem to stand beside a grave, And stand by it alone.' To her admirers in this country it is now as if her unconscious corpse were in banishment. The feeling is not to be repressed that sympathy and justice require us to look thitherward, and not to leave all that has passed to be quietly covered with oblivion."

"Should there," he asked, pursuing this subject, "be nothing more than an ejaculation of passive regret, when life has been made unendurable to one whom it seemed preparing to crown with fame and happiness? As yet in the very bloom of life, with growing powers and reputation, a new world of nature around her, and her former world anxiously beginning to calculate the length of her sojourn; endowed with qualities of heart that, by those who knew her, are spoken of still more enthusiastically than her clear intellect and brilliant fancy, and but recently entered on that stage which, if sanctified by the attention that constitutes its essence, is the most blissful on earth; what could produce the tremendous revulsion implied in the fatal act? Any imputation, either on conduct or temper, as a disposing cause, is effectually precluded by the evidence of her husband. So entire was his satisfaction, so full his approval, that even slight and unavoidable irritability had met with no provocation, and he deposes that not an unkind word had ever passed between them. There must be some deep fault, some great personal or social wrong, somewhere; or whence the mournful catastrophe?"