Letitia Elizabeth Landon

“ Though pinched with cold, asks never.—Kate is craz’d."
How wonderful! how beautiful! these words
Are but the usual recompense assigned
To usual efforts of the human mind.
And yet how little jars these mighty chords!
How soon but one uneasy hour affords
Space for disunion and for disarray,
To mar the music of an earlier day!
It is a fearful thing to live, yet be
That which is scarcely life the spirit fled—
Death at the heart—our nobler self is dead—
The reasoning and responsible, while we
Live, like the birds around, unconsciously. ”

“ Whether we regard the city of Cordova as the ancient seat of learning, the birth-place of the two Senecas and the poet Lucan, or contemplate the heathen, Christian, and barbaric vestiges of former greatness, which it still retains, the mind is led onward in the history of men and nations, from one to another of those great land-marks, which the river of time has left unmoved by its perpetual ebb and flow.
Beyond the mosque, and stretching to the left, is a pile of building formerly called the Alcazor, but more fearfully known to modern times as the dungeon of the Inquisition. ”

“ But it was in her few last years that her heart and mind seemed every day to develope more strength, and to gather a wider range of humanity into their embrace. In the later volumes of the Drawing-Room Scrap Book, many of the best poems of which have been reprinted with the Zenana, nothing was more striking than the steady development of growing intellectual power, and of deep, and generous, and truly philosophical sentiments, tone of thought, and serious experience. ”

“ In these she has shown, under the characters of Guido and Walter Maynard, her admiration of genius, and her opinion of its fate; under those of Francesca and Ethil Churchill, the adverse destiny of pure and high-souled woman.
These volumes abound with proofs of a shrewd observation of society, with masterly sketches of character, and the most beautiful snatches of scenery. But what surprise and delight more than all, are the sound and true estimates of humanity, and the honest boldness with which her opinions are expressed. ”

“ The stars shine out above your snows,
Until the world seems made
For that one hour of dim repose
Of solitude and shade.
What have ye witnessed, since ye prest,
Beneath the new-born sun,
That shadow, type of those which rest
All human things upon. ”

“ Every succeeding year must have given to L. E. L. a more captivating and endearing hold on their minds, for over none of her numerous works had she cast more lavishly the rainbow hues of her genius, and in none had the evidences of her still rapidly growing intellect, and the expanding and deepening scope of her observation and her human sympathies, become more apparent. Every reader of the Drawing-Room Scrap Book would at once respond to Miss Landon's own candid declaration to the publishers, that she had given "a high literary character to it;" ”

“ Has fallen since the fall;
And low desires, and care, and crime,
Hold empire over all.
Yet not the less it is our part
To do the best we can:
A better faith—a better fate
Man yet may work for man. ”

“ Hast thou gone from us, young and gifted one!
And what in love thou gavest, here we treasure,
Sweet words of song penned in those far-off wilds,
And pure and righteous thoughts, in lofty measure,
Strong as a patriot's, gentle as a child's. ”

“ There is not, perhaps, upon the face of the habitable globe, any single scene so calculated to impress the mind of the spectator with a variety of distinct and powerful emotions, as that which the skilful and intelligent artist has here presented to our view. ”

“ We should say that it is the young and the ardent who must always be the warmest admirers of the larger poems of L.E.L. They are filled with the faith and the fancies of the young. The very scenery and ornaments are of that rich and showy kind which belongs to the youthful taste—the white rose, the jasmine, the summer garniture of deep grass, and glades of greenest foliage ”

“ We track our selfish way,
Careless if hope to-day still takes
Its tone from yesterday.
We look upon our daily path,
We do not look beyond,
Forgetful of the brotherhood
In nature's mighty bond. ”

“ I feel that a responsible and somewhat difficult duty has been laid upon me, less from the intrinsic nature of the work itself, than from being the successor of its former Editor. The pleasant custom of nine years had so associated her name, and her peculiar sentiments and graceful poetry, with these volumes, that, even though it had been possible for me to perform the task more ably, it must take some time to accustom the public to the difference. This consciousness has, I confess, made me perform my part with some anxiety. ”

“ As we place these talismanic letters, L. E. L., which have stood so attractively for not less than eight years on the title-page of the Drawing-Room Scrap Book, at the head of a closing article on the genius of the very interesting and gifted creature whom they represented, we feel it to be a circumstance in which the readers of the Scrap-Book must, more than all others, take the deepest interest. ”

“ Think of the mass of material which every day accumulates! Then experience, with its calm, clear light corrects so many youthful fallacies; every day we feel our higher moral responsibility, and our greater power. ”

“ The chief idol, called Juggernaut, is a huge unsightly figure of wood, bearing some distant resemblance to the human form: it is painted black, with a red mouth, and large red and white circles for eyes. ”

“ The circumstance, however, which terminated the intercourse of L. E. L. with the readers of this work, was that only which snapped asunder her connexion with the earth itself—death—an early and melancholy death.
We have, within a few years, felt some of the most vivid sensations which the death of popular writers can, under any circumstances, possibly create. ”

“ The ceremony of drawing the car takes place in June, and it is calculated that about 200,000 pilgrims, three-fourths of them females, annually resort to this festival, of whom at least 50,000 perish by sickness, hunger, and fatigue, and by voluntarily throwing themselves under its ponderous wheels. ”

“ Tradition relates that the saint, who was niece of William the Good, disgusted with the manners of her uncle's court, at the early age of fifteen retired to a life of solitude and prayer, on the mountains near Palermo, and was not heard of after. ”