4
THE
DRAWING-ROOM SCRAP BOOK.
L. E. L.
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. 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;" and nothing is more true than her assertion to the same party, "Some of my best poems have appeared in the Drawing-Room Scrap Book."
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. We have not forgotten the electric shock which the death of Byron, falling in his prime and in a noble cause, sent through Europe: nor the more expected, but not less solemn and strongly recognized departure of Sir Walter Scott: but neither of these exceeded that with which the news was received of the sudden decease of this still young and popular poetess. the apprehensions which the climate suggested, on the first tidings of her going out to Cape Coast Castle, did not even abate the abrupt effect of the news of her death. The mysterious circumstances attending it, threw a tragic horror around it, and kindled an intense eagerness to penetrate their obscurity. The strange contrast between the youthful and buoyant spirit of L. E. L.'s genius, and the sombre tone of her views of life and human nature, were not more startling and stimulant than that between her popularity and her fate.
