But for this solace I should despair or perish." The words are not
exact--the book is not beside me, but such is their substance. He who
lists can seek them for himself in the pages of that wondrous spell
woven by Mrs. Gaskell--that tragic and strange biography which once in a
season of deep despondency did more to reconcile me to my own condition,
through my pity and admiration for another, than all the condolences
that came so freely from lip and pen. Every fabric that love had
erected crumbled about her or turned to Dead-Sea ashes on her lip. See
what a world of passion those French letters and themes of hers betray!
The brand of suffering and suffocating sorrow is on every one of them,
plain to the eye of the initiated alone, they who have gazed on the
wonders of the inner temple--the holy of holies--and gone forth
reverently to dream of the revelation evermore in silence.
But, above every ruin of hope, or pride, or affection, like an imperial
banner flung from "the outer wall," her imagination waved and triumphed.
"The clouds of glory" she trailed after her were dyed in spheres
unapproachable by death, or shame, or disappointment, and the gift
described in the Arabian story as conferred by the genii's salve when he
touched therewith the eyes of the traveler and caused him to see all the
wonders of the earth, its gems, its gold, its gleaming chrysolites, its
inward fires, unobscured by the interposition of dust and clay, which
veiled them from all the rest of humanity, may stand as a type of her
ideality.
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