the wind -a splendid exotic nurtured for display; she is the Hebrew whose songs are demanded in a strange land; Ruth standing, amid the alien corn; her affections are the dew that society exhales, but gives not back to her in rain; she is a jewelled captive, bright, and desolate, and sad!" Who can read this description of the fate of an ambitious woman, without believing that the writer must herself have played upon the brink of that precipice, down which her heroine had plunged; and the more feelingly we contemplate the degree of suffering and temptation to which her own ardent nature was liable, the more we rejoice that she listened to the warnings of the still small voice, and retreated to a safe resting-place, and found that shelter and repose, which, beloved and admired as she was, she never could have enjoyed as the idol of society. There is nothing more powerfully expressed in the writings. of Miss Jewsbury, than her own deep sense of the utter emptiness and insufficiency of all earthly enjoyments. Even of human sympathy, she who must have proved its utmost worth remarks, in one of her earliest publications,-" It is indeed a frail evanescent thing, which we all over-estimate, until deep suffering convinces us of its little real worth. As the parent of charity, it may alleviate tangible evils, and diminish the sum of bodily sufferings. Food may relieve hunger; medicine may assuage sickness; money may convey warmth and plenty to the abodes of poverty; sympathy may smooth the surface of human sorrow; but its dark troubled depths must remain dark and troubled still. It cannot medicine the soul, and there lie all the griefs that kill."-Again speaking through her imaginary "Enthusiast," she says of "knowledge-ask, is it come to this! Knowledge, though it still invigorates my understanding, no longer fills my heart with unalloyed pleasure; it seems only to open my eyes. to fresh views of human crime and sorrow. And what is the office of poetry? little other than to strew flowers over the various sepulchres in which the heart buries its dead. Yes, poetry may be ethereal in our nature, but it also enervates, and saddens; it imparts poison in an odour; it slays with a jewelled scymetar." . What, then, was left for one who had tried all things which her ambition had pointed out as desirable, and experienced, ere the prime of life, that all was vanity? What but to choose that better part commended by the Saviour himself, when he accepted the precious ointment as the offering of a love, whose depth and devotedness he alone could comprehend. 66 In Miss Jewsbury's earliest connected work, entitled, Phantasmagoria," much of her natural tendency to satire is exhibited, without the subdued and chastened feelings which imparted a deep interest to the productions of her riper years. It is said by those most intimately acquainted with her, that many of her best writings appeared anonymously in the periodicals of the day, and these she collected together previously to her departure for India, there is every reason to suppose, with the intention of having them republished under her own name. It is much to be regretted, that no complete edition of her works has yet appeared; and if such be in preparation, it must be the ardent wish of every admirer of true genius, that they may fall into able and generous hands, capable of doing justice to so talented an author. If neither the intellectual nor religious part of Miss Jewsbury's character was ever fully exhibited in her native country, there is a noble testimony on record, that, during her short but honourable career in India, the matured virtues of her heart and mind were brought into more powerful and efficient exercise. Sustained by that faith which gives strength to the feeble, and energy to the desponding, she devoted herself to her hus F band through a severe and protracted illness; and when disease was raging around her, and famine presented every aspect of wretchedness to her compassionate view, her abode was thronged by the native women and children, whose sufferings were not only commiserated, but as far as possible relieved. It was in this way that she sought to win the hearts of the people, as well as to gratify her own benevolent feelings; to convince them that her religion was one which led those who received it to delight in binding up the broken-hearted, and comforting those that mourned, while she hoped to be able gradually to instil into their minds its important and sublime principles. But the term of her usefulness was near its close, and while compassionating the sufferings of others, she herself fell a victim to the same dreadful disease. Mrs. Fletcher died of the cholera, in her way from Sholapore to Bombay, on the 3d of October, 1833. It is recorded, as one of the last acts of her valuable life, that while famine was desolating the neighbourhood of Sholapore, and her benevolence and charity were extending themselves in every available channel, a poor Hindoo, deprived by starvation of his wife and all his children, except one infant daughter, having crawled with this child in his arms to the foot of his idol, was found dead before the altar, as if arrested in the act of supplicating for relief. Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher hastened to the spot-had the father buried, and the unconscious child thus literally found in the arms of death, they adopted as their own. During the short remaining period of her life, Mrs. Fletcher carefully and affectionately attended upon this orphan; and it was one of the last acts of her benevolence to have it placed in a female missionary school. POUR ELISA FRISELL, La fille de mon ami, enterrée devant moi, hier, 16 Juin, au Cimetière de Passy. BY CHATEAUBRIAND. IL descend, ce cercueil; et les roses sans tâches, Ah! ne les rend jamais à ce monde profane— Tu dors, pauvre Elisa, si légère d'années! Jeune fille et jeune fleur. Mais ton père, Elisa, sur ta cendre s'incline— TRANSLATION. BY ARCHDEACON WRANGHAM. SLOW sinks the coffin, with it's stainless rose Give them not back to this vile world again, This world where anguish wields so wide a power; Here by the scorching sun and torrent rain Snapt, tarnish'd, fade-young maiden and young flower. Thou sleep'st, Eliza, in thy early bed, Fearless henceforth of noontide's sultry hour; The freshness of the dewy morn is fled, Aye fled from both-young maiden and young flower. By thy loved dust, thy sire's shrunk form is thrown; Time at thy foot, ancestral oak, has strown With equal scythe-young maiden and young flower. |