“Here we suffer grief and pain,
Here we meet to part again;
In Heaven we part no more.
Oh! that will be joyful,” etc.
She recalled his question, the whispered question, to her in the happiest part of the day. He asked Libbie: “Is Dunham like Heaven? The people here are as kind as angels, and I don’t want Heaven to be more beautiful than this place. If you and mother would but die with me, I should like to die, and live always there!” She had checked him, for she feared he was impious; but now the young child’s craving for some definite idea of the land to which his inner wisdom told him he was hastening, had nothing in it wrong, or even sorrowful, for—
“In Heaven we part no more.”
II
Novels
Mary Barton, Lizzie Leigh, Ruth, and North and South, Mrs. Gaskell’s earlier novels, were written with a purpose—“to defend the poor”—and in them she discusses some of the social problems of the day, which she tried to solve. Later she proved how well she could write in a humorous vein, as in Cranford, Mr. Harrison’s Confessions, and My Lady Ludlow.