"The thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I'm tired of being enclosed here. I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it and in it. You think you are better and more fortunate than I, in full health and strength; you are sorry for me—very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for you. I shall be incomparably above and beyond you all."[32]
Ah, yes; incomparably above and beyond. Not only because of the keen vision with which she has revealed the glorious world in which her memory is fresher wind, and brighter sunshine, not only for that; but because the remembrance of her living self is a most high and noble precept. Never before were hands so inspired alike for daily drudgery and for golden writing never to fade. Never was any heart more honourable and strong, nor any more pitiful to shameful weakness. Seldom, indeed, has any man, more seldom still any woman, owned the inestimable gift of genius and never once made it an excuse for a weakness, a violence, a failing, which in other mortals we condemn. No deed of hers requires such apology. Therefore, being dead she persuades us to honour; and not only her works but the memory of her life shall rise up and praise her, who lived without praise so well.
THE END.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. S.W.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mrs. Gaskell.