Letitia Elizabeth Landon

“ Composition, like every thing else, feels the influence of time. At first, all is poetry with the young poet; his heart is full of emotions eagerly struggling for utterance; every thing suggests the exercise of his own sweet art. A leaf, a flower, the star far off in the serene midnight, a look, a word, are enough for a poem. Gradually this profusion exhausts itself, the mind grows less fanciful, and poetry is rather a power than a passion. Feelings have hardened into thoughts, and the sensations of others are no longer almost as if they had been matter of experience. ”

“ What is it but having our happiness taken out of our own hands, and delivered, bound and bartered, into that of another."
"But that other," exclaimed Ethel, "may delight in making it more precious than their own."
"The chances are fearfully against it," replied the old man. "Nature and fate rarely accord their old dark variance. You are by the one formed to be beloved, and to love. As all experience shows, the probabilities are, that you will waste the rich treasure of your affection on one who has none to give in return, or who is wholly unworthy of the gift." ”

“ Poor Henrietta has no friend in the world but myself. Hopeless as her madness is, though she knows me not, my presence soothes her; and with me she is gentle as a child."
"Incurable insanity!" exclaimed Norbourne, "violent or melancholy, it is an awful visitation on one so young, so beautiful, and so gifted!"
"God grant," said Ethel, "that her sufferings in this world may be her atonement in the next. As far as human skill can say, years, long years, are before her. To us, Norbourne, she will be as a sister, is it not so?" ”

“ We turn away from the future, we are too desponding to look forward. Every sorrow of the past seems to rise up, not only as a recollection of suffering, but as if each were an omen of what is to come. We feel as if even to wish were a folly; or, worse, a tempting of fate. We have no confidence in our own good fortune; it seems as if the mere fact of wishing were enough to have that wish denied. A fretful discontent gnaws at the heart, the worse for being ashamed to confess it.
But Ethel soon felt the error of giving way to this utter discouragement: she made it a duty to struggle against it. ”

“ Norbourne has for you an affection that but few sons have for their father. He admires, he understands you; and confidence on your part, and return, will make him your affectionate and devoted child. I sometimes hope that it will be so, for my sake. You will grieve together over my loss; and grief subdues and draws those who share it together.
And now, dearest father, for what I long, yet dread to say. Norbourne is young; he will, I believe, I hope, marry again. May she whom he marries be to you as a daughter! Let her be such: you can make any one love you whom you choose. ”

“ I saw her, too, delicate, sensitive; ready to fade away before life's first sorrow. I could not bear to think that disappointed affection should hurry her to an early grave. Norbourne, in the name of the deepest and the holiest feeling that I have, I implore you to forgive me."
Norbourne took the proffered hand; his anger had vanished in sympathy, and they stood for a few moments in agitated silence, which was broken by Lord Norbourne.
"I know that you are now in love: but what is love?—a young man's feverish dream, whose realities, on awakening, he would give worlds to recall. ”

“ Our feelings are checked, and we are afraid of their indulgence—why give weapons against our own peace? Hence, we become cold, doubtful, stern,—how are the elements of happiness departed from us! It is life's first lesson, and its severest; we shall never suffer so bitterly again, because we can never more know such keen enjoyment: yet this first lesson is but the type of all that are to come. Throughout our weary pilgrimage we are duped and betrayed! One hope after another dies away like a star in the dim chill light of morning and reality. ”

“ Alas! as Lady Mary says, 'To my extreme mortification, I grow wiser every day!'"
"I do not know," said Ethel, with a deep sigh, "whether I am wiser, but I am not happier than I used to be; I am not so happy!"
"The future owes you recompense," answered her companion; "at all events, there is a great deal of pleasure before you, if you come out as a beauty and an heiress: I trust that Sir Robert will decree that you shall be set in gold!" ”

“ There was a grave beneath, but who slept in that grave was known only to Lord Norbourne. There was in the stillness of the statues around, so colourless, so calm, that which struck cold upon the guests. All around spoke of desolation and of death, till life seemed but a mockery in their presence. What folly to crowd so brief a span with the toil and the fever in which men spend their days! It is a strange and solemn thing that the bridal ritual should take place in the presence of the dead. ”

“ It may be a weakness, though growing out of all that is most redeeming in our nature,—the desire that is in us to make the City of the Departed beautiful, as well as sacred. The green yew that flings down its shadow, the wild-flowers that spring up in the long grass, take away from the desolation, they are the type and sign of a world beyond themselves. Even as spring brings back the leaf to the bough, the blossom to the grass, so will a more glorious spring return to that which is now but a little human dust. ”

“ Henrietta felt too deeply for small vanity, she soon grew anxious; and if there be one torture which the demons, who delight in human misery, might rejoice to inflict, it is the anxious suspense of love acting upon an imaginative temperament. It is extraordinary the power of creation with which the mind seems suddenly endowed, and only to suppose the worst. Death, sickness, crime, misfortune,—these are the images which start upon the solitude made fearful with their presence. But there mingled among them, for Lady Marchmont, a spectre darker than the rest—remorse. ”

“ To become the subject of the pity I have so despised! Norbourne, you are your father's representative; you owe me some atonement: at our hands I ask the name and fame which your father risked in his selfish passion. The God whose shrine I deserted for earthly affection is terribly avenged. My husband deceived—my son deserts me; but you cannot, Norbourne, abandon to shame the mother who watched your cradle. It is my life I ask—I will not survive the disgrace!"
"Mother," said Norbourne, in a hoarse whisper, "tell Lord Norbourne from me, I will marry his daughter." ”

“ Mrs. Courtenaye then rapidly sketched her previous history; and, long before it was ended, Ethel had bowed her face in her hands, and was weeping bitterly.
"Oh!" exclaimed she, "true and generous as ever! how I have misjudged him!"
"The atonement is in your own hands," said Mrs. Courtenaye; "you will let him see you this evening?"
"If he loves me still," whispered Ethel; but now she felt deep in her own heart, that affection knows no change, nor shadow of turning. ”

“ A streak of wan and sickly light, began to glimmer in the east; and again Lady Marchmont clenched her hands together, and asked—"Will he come?"
The cold wind lifted her long hair from her neck; but she felt it not. Suddenly she started; she pressed her hands to her burning eye-lids to clear their sight: but—no; she was not deceived: a figure, as yet indistinct as a shadow, was hurrying across the park. The colour deepened on her cheek, the light flashed from her eyes; but neither colour nor light were such as are wont to welcome the expected lover's arrival. ”

“ There was something in this abrupt allusion to the treasured and hidden past, that at once shocked and silenced Norbourne. He was annoyed to find that his heart's sweetest secret was in the possession of one so little likely to keep it; and who, from the very position in which he found her, would, probably, only consider it as matter for a coarse jest.
"How, in the name of all that is wonderful, do I find you here?" asked he, less from any curiosity, than feeling it a necessity to say something.
"Why, luck's all in this world," replied she. ”

“ And love—it is a bitter thing to love in vain!—to feel that none will ever know the deep tenderness, the desire for sympathy, the sweet wealth of thought that is garnered in your heart. How passionately I wish to be beloved again! to pour out my whole soul, were it but for a day, and then die!"
The emotion exhausted him; for Walter had tried a frame, naturally delicate, too severely. The vigil and the revel, the hour of social excitement and that of solitary suffering, were alike doing their work. Bodily weakness mastered for a time the mind. ”

“ Taking her earliest opportunity, she whispered,
"Only think, Norbourne, of your knowing Lady Marchmont! do talk to her; she is so kind, so charming."
But her words fell on unheeding ears. Courtenaye's thoughts were far away; and Constance, shrinking into herself at the least repulse, did not attempt to speak to him again.
There is nothing in this world so sensitive as affection. It feels its own happiness too much not to tremble for its reality; and starts, ever and anon, from its own delicious consciousness, to ask, Is it not, indeed, a dream? ”

“ If there be poetry in this world, it is in the depths of an unrequited and an imaginative passion—pure, dreaming, sacred from all meaner cares and lower wishes; asking no return, but feeling that life were little to lavish on the beloved one. Often and often did Walter's dark eyes glisten as he poured his whole soul in some strain of tender eloquence, which he knew must touch the heart of woman. ”

“ They have the floor for a bed; the scant and mouldering remnant of food for dinner; the cold hearth, where the wind blows in the snow;—these physical sufferings re-act on the moral world, they deaden and embitter the sweetest of our feelings. The parent half loves, half loathes, the child that takes the bread from his own mouth; and the child looks on that as tyranny, which is only misery. It learns to fear before it learns to love. ”

“ Life is made up of vanities—so small,
So mean, the common history of the day,—
That mockery seems the sole philosophy.
Then some stern truth starts up—cold, sudden, strange;
And we are taught what life is by despair:—
The toys, the trifles, and the petty cares,
Melt into nothingness—we know their worth;
The heart avenges every careless thought,
And makes us feel that fate is terrible.
Amid the many mirrors called into requisition by Lady Townshend's fête, not one gave back a lovelier likeness than that which reflected the face and form of Lady Marchmont. ”

“ Fame seems afar off, and cold sunshine; and that eager readiness of thought, which, found in the slightest thing matter for some graceful fancy, which at once sprang into music, seems cold and dead within us.
There are times when the poet marvels how he ever wrote, and feels as if he never could write again. Alas! it is this world's worst curse, that the body predominates over the mind; and this was just now the case with Walter Maynard.
He was roused from his meditation by a light touch on the shoulder: it was Lavinia Fenton, of whom he had lately seen but little. ”

“ It is strange the difference between the hair of the living and the dead: the one so soft, so fragrant, and falling; the other so harsh, so scentless, and so straight. In nothing is the presence of mortality more strongly marked.
There was a perfume hung about the casket; but it came not from that coldly golden hair: it rose from the withered leaves of some flowers, whose scent outlived their colours. Norbourne at once recognised the riband he himself had put round the roses the night of that festival whose end had been so fatal. ”

“ Soon—how soon it appeared to come!—the day appointed for Miss Churchill's marriage arrived. With a faint shudder, she looked from her window. The whole garden was bathed in sunshine; a light wind stirred the branches, which seemed filled with singing birds: she turned away; the light and the music were painful to her. Who has not felt this exaggeration of the sick heart, which reproaches inanimate nature with its lack of sympathy, which turns from the golden light of day, from the cheerful sights and sounds that fill the open air with rejoicing, as if the gladness only mocked their misery! ”

“ Ask me not, love, what may be in my heart
When, gazing on thee, sudden teardrops start;
When only joy should come where'er thou art.
The human heart is compassed with fears;
And joy is tremulous, for it enspheres
An earth-born star, which melts away in tears.
I am too happy for a careless mirth—
Hence anxious thoughts, and sorrowful, have birth;
Who looks from heaven, is half returned to earth.
How powerless is my fond anxiety!
I feel I could lay down my life for thee,
Yet feel how vain such sacrifice might be. ”

“ It is, I believe, our only fountain, and all the associations of a fountain are poetical. It carries us to the East, and the stately halls of the caliphs rise on the mind's eye; and we think over the thousand and one stories which made our childhood so happy, and stored up a world of unconscious poetry for our future years: or else it conjures up the graceful old Italian histories of moonlight festivals, when the red wine was cooled, and the lute echoed by the soft sound of falling waters. We leave the world of reality behind us for that of romance. ”

“ From that day, however, all friendship was at an end between Lady Mary and Pope. How he revenged himself is well known. His lines yet remain, stamped with all the bitterness of wounded vanity and mortified affection. Strange, the process by which love turns into hate. I pity it even more than I blame it. What unutterable wretchedness must the heart have undergone! What scorn and what sorrow must have been endured before revenge could become a refuge and a resource! ”

“ I will never consent to your marrying any but your cousin—for my sake consent."
"My dearest mother," cried Norbourne, "is it possible that wordly advantages can so far blind your judgment? Do you know what it is to love—to feel how unutterably dear the presence of another can be—to know that all life could offer were valueless without her—to hope, to fear, to think, only for her beloved sake?" ”

“ If there be one emotion that redeems our humanity by stirring all that is generous and unselfish within us, that awakens all the poetry of our nature, and that makes us believe in that heaven of which it bears the likeness, it is love: love, spiritual, devoted, and eternal; love, that softens the shadow of the valley of death, to welcome us after to its own and immortal home. ”

“ Too soon the subtle instinct of love told me that I was not to Norbourne what he was to me!"
"No woman ever is to a man," interrupted Lady Marchmont: "your solitary education has led you to form ethereal fancies that can never be realised. It is impossible to be a more affectionate, or a kinder husband, than Mr. Courtenaye."
"He is too kind," replied Constance, mournfully; "he feels that he has to make up to me for the heart which I have not. I am punished for having worshipped too entirely an earthly idol: it has not been given to me to make that happiness which I would purchase, ah! ”

“ It spreads the beauteous images abroad,
Which else lie furled and clouded in the soul.'
I do not know the reason," continued Henrietta, "but whenever I am very anxious about any thing, and I am, indeed, anxious now, my memory, by way of passing the time, always seems to fill with what were its earliest delights. How well I remember the old dark-looking volumes, from which my uncle used to evoke such beautiful creation! How real they then seemed to be! How devoutly I believed in these ethereal creations! Love, hope, and happiness, then appeared to me actual existences. ”

“ Are you jealous?"
"I could not pay myself so bad a compliment," returned her husband, looking towards the mirror: "it is only acknowledging my taste, to admire my wife; but Lady Marchmont can never forget to whom she belongs!"
"It would be very difficult," thought Henrietta; but she kept her thoughts to herself, while his lordship, satisfied with this display of eloquent authority, was employed in perfuming his handkerchief afresh. "I promise you," said she, after a pause of some minutes, "to wear the last new dress you gave me, it is a triumph of taste!" ”

“ Ethel and Mr. Courtenaye both walked on in silence, both careless of what direction they took, and solitary, even in that glittering crowd, each alive only to the other's presence. At length each stopped, as if moved by a sudden and mutual feeling; perhaps Ethel, unconsciously, obeyed the movement of Norbourne, to whom the quick, silent walk, had become intolerable. On his part, there might, also, have been a little intention; for nothing could be more lonely than the nook where they paused. ”

“ I love you miserably, desperately!"
"But you love your own pride better," exclaimed her companion.
"Pride!—ah, no!" returned Henrietta. "I have no pride but in you. I could be content to be a slave, a beggar, for your sake. All that I ever read of my sex's devotion seems possible—nay, natural, when I think of what I feel for you. I should hold my life as nothing could it purchase your happiness."
"And yet," interrupted Sir George, "you can calmly, coldly condemn me to the most insupportable misery." ”

“ Nothing can compensate to a woman for the want of exterior attraction. There is a nameless fascination about beauty, which seems, like all fairy gifts, crowded into one. It wins without an effort, and obtains credit for possessing every thing else. How many mortifications, from its very cradle, has the unpleasing exterior to endure! To be unloved—what a fate for a woman whose element is love! ”

“ There was an habitual sarcasm on Lady Marchmont's finely cut lip, and Ethel's smile had grown into a sad sweetness. On the brow was a deeper shadow—serious and thoughtful. The glad bursts of laughter, the gay fantasies, the buoyant hopes, which they used to meet and share together, were all gone by for ever.
The servants removed the tea-things, and they drew nearer to the fire, and to each other. Both had a great deal to say, and yet the conversation languished; but we have all felt this after a long absence: confidence is a habit, and requires to be renewed. ”

“ Hope had never been the companion of love. Even in her most secret communings with herself, she had never admitted even the fancy of their union. But to-night she felt deeply within her secret soul the utter happiness of loving and being beloved. What were her future brilliant prospects? The truth within her whispered, that she had been happier, even in the lonely lot which she that very evening had ridiculed, with Walter Maynard, than in a palace, and not his. ”

“ Too late do I find that affection is woman's only element; to love, to look up, is her destiny; and, if unfulfilled, nothing can supply its place. Life has no real business for her beyond the sweet beating of her own heart dwelling in the shadow of another's. She may crowd her days with gaiety, variety, and what are called amusements; she will do so only to find their insufficiency. She needs the strength of duty, and the interest of affection. But I—I tremble at my happiness! my life is a struggle with my feelings and my circumstances! ”

“ Norbourne paused, with an irresolution for which he himself could not account, as he approached the door of his mother's room.
The future has a more subtle sympathy with the present than our imperfect nature can analyse. Who has not felt that nameless shadow upon the spirit, which indicates the coming trouble as surely as the over-hanging cloud foretells the thunderstorm? The external world is full of signs; and so is the internal, if we knew but how to trace them. There is the weight on the air before the tempest; there is the weight on the heart as the coming evil approaches. ”

“ She sat half upright, supported on Henrietta's shoulder; and, taking her father's hand, she clasped it with her husband's.
"He will be your child," said she: "my remembrance will be the link to bind you together. My beloved father, you owe him a debt only affection can repay. Think how kind he has always been to your wearied and suffering child: night after night he has watched over me; day after day he has given up pleasures and occupations to yield me the only enjoyment of which I was capable—the conscious happiness of his presence. ”

“ Nothing but love can answer to love; no affection, no kindness, no care, can supply its place: it is its own sweet want.
Do you remember my fainting at Marble Villa? A sudden and dreadful jealousy of Lady Marchmont entered my mind. God only can forgive me for all I then thought! for God only can know the agony of my suffering. A moment's frantic misery led to an explanation with Lady Marchmont; and I learnt that my wretchedness had been vain. But not with my jealousy of her, who was afterwards my dear and true friend, did the knowledge depart that such jealousy had brought. ”

“ I am often frightened and weary when I think of it. Every day more and more reconciles me to the idea of leaving it. I could lay my head down on my last pillow, and sleep gladly, like a tired child, but for my father."
"My dearest Constance," cried Lady Marchmont," I will not let you talk in this dejected mood; many, many happy years are before you!"
"It is not a dejected mood, dearest friend," was the answer; "it is one of faith and of hope. God has, for his own good purposes, weaned my heart from a world in which he means me to make but a brief sojourn. ”