Page:Mrs Elwood 1843.pdf/11

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MRS. MACLEAN.
313

grave. An Irish patriot once candidly observed to me, 'Give me London to live in, but let me die in green Ireland;' now this is precisely my opinion."

Considering Miss Landon's predilection for London, it was fortunate that it was her fate to spend the greater part of her life in or near the metropolis, and singular, that it should be her fate, after thus protesting against a tomb there, that she should have found an untimely and premature grave on the uncivilized and almost unknown shores of Africa; there, according to her poetical wish,

"Perhaps some kindly hand may bring
    Its offering to the tomb;
And say, as fades the rose in spring
    So fadeth human bloom."

In 1815, when Miss Landon was about thirteen years of age, the family quitted Trevor Park, and after a twelvemonth's residence at Lewis Place, Fulham, Mr. Landon removed to Brompton, where a considerable part of his daughter's youth was passed, excepting a year or two spent with her grandmother in Sloane-street, and some occasional visits to her relations. Here, no sooner was she emancipated from the school-room, and allowed to pursue the bent of her own mind, than her poetical reveries were committed to paper, and through the encouraging kindness of Mr. Jerdan, the editor of the Literary Gazette, to whose judgment they were submitted, while still in her teens, the youthful writer had the pleasure of seeing some of her verses first appear in print, in the pages of that periodical, and visions of fame, perhaps, in some degree comforted her for the reverses to which her family were then beginning to be subjected.