Page:Mrs Elwood 1843.pdf/20

322 or society : doomed to censure, which is always in earnest, and to praise, which is not. Alas! we talk of their vanity; we forget that in doling forth the careless sneer, we are bestowing but the passing thought of a moment to that which has been the work of an existence. Truly, genius, like virtue, ought to be its own reward, but it cannot. Bitter though the toil, and vain the hope, human exertion must still look to human approbation." "Francesca Carrera," the next prose production of Miss Landon's pen, was published by Mr. Bentley in 1834. In this the story is considerably more interesting than that of "Romance and Reality ;" but it is too uniformly melancholy; for as if from a presentiment of her own sad and untimely end, Miss Landon appears to have delighted in portraying death scenes, most of which are sudden and violent. In "Romance and Reality" there are four or five described, and in "Francesca Carrera" not less than eight, including the fatal catastrophe with which the work concludes. That Miss Landon was aware of the melancholy strain of her own writings, is apparent from the following observations. "I have been told that my writings are too melancholy. How can that be a reproach, if they are true? and that they are true, I attest the sympathy of others and my own experience. If I have painted a state of moral lassitude, when the heart is left like a ruined and deserted city, where the winged step of joy, and the seven-stringed lute of hope have ceased each to echo the other; where happiness lies cold and dead on its own threshold; where dust lies dry and arid over all, and there is no sign of vegetation or promise of change—if I