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For what? To labour without hope,
Beneath a foreign sky;
To gather up unrighteous wealth;
To droop, decline and die!
9.
Such wrong is darkly visited;
The masters have their part;
For theirs had been the blinded eye,
And theirs the hardened heart.
Evil may spring unchecked
Within the mortal soul;
If such plague-spot be not removed,
It must corrupt the whole.
10.
The future doth avenge the past:
Now, for thy future's sake,
Oh! England for the guilty part
A deep atonement make.
The slave is given to thy charge,
He hopes from thee alone;
And thou for every soul so given
Must answer with thine own.
The character of L. E. L.'s mind affords a most interesting study to the mental philosopher.*[1] The
- ↑ * Manner, though not an invariable criterion of the mental character, is yet frequently tinged with the mind's prevailing hue, and thus becomes a visible sign of the internal being. One feature of Miss Landon's manner seemed peculiarly connected with her intellectual existence. This was a graceful quickness in every movement; so accordant with that rapidity of thought which is the especial attribute of genius. No one could doubt L. E. L.'s possession of genius who had ever seen her under its influence. Every thing seemed accomplished by her without effort. Her thoughts appeared to spring up spontaneously on any proposed subject; so that her literary tasks were completed with a facility and quickness that to slower minds wore almost the aspect of intuition. In truth she could say,
"I but call
My trusty spirits, and they come."In her conversation too there was the like ease, the like rapidity
