The Madisonian. [volume] (Washington City [i.e. Washington, D.C.]) 1837-1845, 1837-12-28

or on beautiful pointer, or the blue sky, o.
any thing that formed part Of the paradise in
her infancy.
The first scene of that paradise was Hans.
place, Chelsea, where she was born, and
where she resided during several years Of her
life which by the way, she ought no. to have
done, as that too must have marked the Bit
temess Of the change--had there been more
than imaginary bitterness in it. Much Of her
earliertime was passed under the guardianship
of her grandmother. II is not Of L. E. l.. we
have heard it related, that, upon seeing lit
tie girl of her own age crying, and finding that
the cause of grief was the death of grand
mother, she turned anxiously TO the servant
and said" I've got two grandmamas, shall
have to cry for them both IL this be true,
there was tendency in child to econo-
mize in the article of sorrow, which suisse
quent indulgences and habits Of gloomy re-
Election are provokingly contrasted with. So
far we are bound TO admit the distressing
change, without allowing that it ought to be
distressing; and can only wish that l.. f L.
whenever she sits down to verse or prose,
would commune with her own mind, with the
view Of ascertaining how little misery will do
for the ocean--how few may be the tears alb
solutely required for any given calamity inlife
that is natural and inevitable What signs
people might save if they chose to the i'm
mense improvement Of their own sympathies,
and the incalculable advantage Of the unhap-
py people they mourn for
1t was at an early age that Miss Landon
became an inmate Of the school Of the Miss
es Lance in Hans-place, and with those la
dies she continued to reside until recently,
when they gave up their establishment The
house has been temple for tuition ever since
it was built, and can boast of other gifted scho-
lars, as well as its latest and most gifted. 1t
claims Mary Russell Milford as one who was
educated within its walls. Lady Caroline
Lamb was also there for time.
As to the period when L. E. L. first began
to write poetry, we can only pretend to fix
il with any tolerable certainty by saying, that
it did not occur till after she was ascertained
to have been born. Perhaps we shall be
most correct in dating it as near the time Of
birth as may be practicable. We shall not
state positively that she improvised before
she could speak; but it is certain that she
composed verses before she could write them.
There was certain epic poem of the in
FAINT l.. E. LIS, which became the subject Of
an express condition; energetically insisted
upon by her brother-that she was not AL
WAYS TO recite it when they went to play
in the garden! Her first wild snatches Of
song and fragments Of romance that appear
ed in the Literary Gazette were written at
very early age so as to be incredible, if the
performance of Cowley, Pope, and others,
when mere children, had left us any room for
doubt, or much for wonder, on the score Of
precocity. She sprang almost from the nurses
arms into those of Fame, and had won the
undying wreath before she knew that 1t was
anything brighter than pretty ornament to
be worn in ball room. By the time she had
found out its value, she seemed to grow tired
of it. To her active and unwearied mind,
the contest for the prize was better than the
possession of it. Quick and vivid sensa-
ton was necessity in her nature dreams,
rhapsodies, reveries, were the natural off
spring of her excitable and imaginative tenn
permanent, these would make themselves
heard, and she "lsped in numbers, for the
numbers came !" she wrote on, because she
could not help it.
But to what advantage--to what end she
probably asked Was she to go on writing
troubadours and golden violets all her days
apos,rophising loves, memoirs, hopes, and
fears, for ever and ever, in scattered songs
and uncompleted stanzas, and running the
chance Of marring the first sweetness Of the
string, weakening her past music by the mo-
notony Of the note! Yet how stop, when the
pen appeared the only safety-valve to keep
sensation and longngs after the visionary
the only link connecting her with the remote,
which she desired, as an escape from the i'm
pending which she dreaded! There seem
ed no help for it like Pope, she " was born
for nothing, but to write J" and "write, write,
write," forms, as she has herself remarked,
the history Of her life. Luckily, however,
there were a few envious and evil natured
persons in the world, and some good speedily
began to grow out Of their jealousy, spleen,
and detraction. l.. E. l.. had her enemies !;
what would the most invincible genius be
without them! She was reviled, ridiculed-
her poetry was called sing-song, her senti-
ment "namby PANTY"
Nothing could have been better qualified to
make her feel her strength, to enable her to
put it forth, to win her from words to things,
from dreams to realities. The positive ex-
perience Of hard contact with the actual,
was startling and disagreeable; the chill Of
sudden plunge into society, after a reyel in
ideal Injuries, was like the shock of cold
bath but this was just what was wanted
Her thoughts found deeper channel, and
flowed still more freely; her observations
took wider range, and scanned the features
of life as they presented themselves to her
earnest gaze-not as she had imagined them
in the pages Of chivalry and romance, or
shaped them for herself amidst the grotesque
fancies Of dream. She discovered that her
powers acquired elasticity, as the subjects on
which they were exercised became more va
rious; and that the world widened as she
IL ca, ilinr