Few
things that I have had to relinquish have cost me a greater pang or
sense of loss, and few of the conditions of my wandering life have
seemed to me more grievous than the necessity it imposed upon me of
destroying these letters. My friend did not act upon her own theory with
regard to my correspondence, and indeed it seems to me that no general
rule can be given with regard to the preservation or destruction of
correspondence. What revelations of misery and guilt may lie in the
forgotten folds of hoarded letters, that have been preserved only to
blast the memory of the dead! What precious words, again, have been
destroyed, that might have lightened for a whole heavy lifetime the
doubt and anguish of the living! In this, as in all we do, we grope
about in darkness, and the one and the other course must often enough
have been bitterly lamented by those who "did for the best" in keeping
or destroying these chronicles of human existence.
Madame Pasta's daughter once said to Charles Young, who enthusiastically
admired her great genius, "Vous trouvez qu'elle chante et joue bien,
n'est-ce pas?" "Je crois bien," replied he, puzzled to understand her
drift. "Well," replied the daughter of the great lyrical artist, "to us,
to whom she belongs, and who know and love her, her great talent is the
least admirable thing about her; but no one but us knows that.
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