Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/105

had been the object, it is hardly necessary to enter at any length. Enough if it be here stated, that between herself and a gentleman with whom it had been for some time a pleasure to her to correspond and to converse, a literary intimacy and interchange of intellectual sentiment had ripened (as it was conjectured among their friends) into a closer and tenderer sympathy. Rumour connected their names as names that were never again to be sundered; and a confirmation of the report that "L. E. L." would soon cease to be the designation of the literary favourite of the public, was anticipated by many. Perhaps it was this rumour of her intended marriage that revived in some quarters the recollection of the old slander, and reanimated prejudice against her. It is, at all events certain, that a resolution was, at this time, formed by two or three of her friends, to force the false speakers to speak out—to trace the report, if possible, to its foul beginning—and compel an acknowledgment of its infamy from those who had idly or maliciously contributed to give circulation to it. The correspondence ended, in the satisfaction of all who were parties to it (men of opposite tempers and characters), that the falsehood was as vile as its fabrication was obscure. That even then, after years had elapsed, there was some show of reason for instituting an inquiry respecting the authorship, will, perhaps, be admitted, when the following letter, addressed by L. E. L., some time after the result of this inquiry, to Mrs. Thomson, has furnished incontestable, and surely most affecting evidence, that the sufferer was still suffering, and that her character was still exposed to the active assaults of error or of malice. Moreover, it was at her own demand that the corre-