happy beings? I believe, if I could be personally introduced to you, that I should, in less than five minutes, begin to enquire about Lucy and the lilies of the valley, and whether you had succeeded in peopling that shady border in your own territories with those shy flowers.' My boys, the constant companion of my walks about our village, and along our two pretty rivers, the Elwy and Clwyd, are not less interested in your gipsies young and old, your heroes of the cricketground, and, above all-Jack Hatch!-woeful and amazed did they all look, when it was found that Jack Hatch could die! But I really must come to the aim and object of this letter, which I fear you may almost begin to look upon as 'prose run mad.' I dare say you laugh sometimes, as I am inclined to do myself, at the prevailing mania for autographs: but a very kind friend of mine in a distant country does no such thing, and I am making a collection for him, which I should think (and he too, I am sure) very much enriched by your name. If you do me the favour to comply with this request, it will give me great pleasure to hear from you, under cover to the Bishop of St. Asaph.With sincere esteem, I beg you to believe me, Madam, your faithful servant,

"FELICIA HEMANS."

This application was answered by Miss Mitford in just the kind and cordial tone which might have been expected from her; and Mrs. Hemans had the pleasure of transmitting to Mr. Norton, the friend for whom she was making the collection of autographs, "that pretty and joyous song" (as she called it in her letter

of acknowledgment), "The Welcome Home," in Miss Mitford's own hand-writing. "Your autograph," she wrote some months later, "which I transmitted to my American friends, was very gratefully received, and is enshrined in a book amidst I know not how many other bright names:' for aught I know, Washington himself may be there, side by side with you; and not improbably is, for they are going to send me an original letter of his, which I shall prize much."

6

Several years after, when this song was published in the fifth volume of Our Village, the following note was appended to it by the warm-hearted writer. "I have a kindness for this little song quite unconnected with any merit of its own-if merit it have-since it formed one of the earliest links in my correspondence with the richly gifted poetess, the admirable and delightful woman, Mrs. Hemans. She will remember the circumstance. Our correspondence has sometimes languished since, but the friendship that sprang from it I humbly hope can never alter."

The correspondence had indeed "languished," with many others not less valued; for by that time (1833) the delicacy of Mrs. Hemans's health had obliged her in a great measure to give up letter writing, her reclining posture making it necessary to adopt the use of the pencil instead of the pen. But the warmth of her feelings towards those she loved and admired continued undiminished, and when this affectionate little notice was unexpectedly brought before her, she described herself as having been moved almost to tears by the genuine cordiality of its tone, while it gladdened her heart like a sudden meeting with a

friend. It was one of her many projects at that period to write a volume of prose sketches-Recollections of a Poet's Childhood, and descriptions of scenes which had most interested and struck her in after years and this she intended to dedicate to Miss Mitford.'

But this is anticipating. To return to the year 1827, and to a letter to Mrs. Joanna Baillie, in which she writes. "You say, my dear madam, that you wish you had something to send me. May I, thus emboldened, ask you for something which I have long wished to possess, but have not been able to procure, as I believe it is at present out of print,-your delightful little drama of The Beacon?-or perhaps you can guide me as to where I may meet with it. I have an edition of your works, containing the Plays

1 That little song, with its name of happy omen, “The Welcome Home," does not cease to be identified with the pleasantest recollections. Mr. Norton will forgive the liberty that is taken in making the following extract from one of his letters, for the sake of showing how such remembrances are cherished in a fardistant land. "Most of my autographs have a peculiar value to me from their associations with the donors as well as the writers; and as I shall record the names of the former in the volume (the first) which I am just about completing, it will be to me a book full of deeply interesting recollections. I have a particular value for some pieces in my collection, but for none more than a song sent by Miss Mitford to Mrs. Hemans, and given by the latter to me, which Miss Mitford mentions in the last volume of Our Village in a manner to make it an object of curiosity and feeling as long as Our Village or Mrs. Hemans's poetry is read; that is, as long as English literature exists."—Cambridge, N. E. 24th May,

on the Passions (with the exception of Orra), Ethwald, Rayner, and Constantine, and I have The Family Legend separate; but The Beacon I have not met with since I read it almost in childhood, and made some extracts from it which would amuse you if you could see them in the school-girl hand of fourteen or fifteen. That heart-cheering song,

'The absent will return-the long, long lost be found,'

I remember being more especially pleased with-it breathes such a spirit of hope and joy; and I am by nature inclined to both, though early cares have chastened and subdued a mind, perhaps but too ardent originally.

"I have another favour to request; it is the permission to dedicate to you, of whom my whole sex may be proud, a work which I shall probably publish in the course of this present year, and which is to be called Records of Woman. If you do not object to this, I will promise that the inscription shall be as simple as you could desire.

66

My children were much pleased by your kind mention of them; the one who had been reading Ethwald with such interest, was not a little amused to find himself designated as a girl: I have none but boys, a circumstance I often am inclined to regret ; for I married so young that they are even now beginning to spring from childhood into youth themselves, and, in the course of a few years I must expect that they will long for, and be launched into, another world than the green fields in which they are now contented to play around me. Let me, however, be

thankful for the happiness I at present enjoy, and for the privilege which peculiar circumstances have afforded me, and which is granted to so few mothers, of being able myself to superintend their education, and give what I hope will be enduring impressions to their minds. Now that I am upon this subject, dear madam, I am strongly tempted to relate a little anecdote which I think will interest you- (mammas are always prone to believe their children must be interesting) of one of them at eleven years old. I had been reading to him Lord Byron's magnificent address to the sea

'Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean,―rol!!'

He listened in almost breathless attention, and exclaimed, the moment I had finished it—It is very grand indeed!—but how much finer it would have been, mamma, if he had said at the close, that God had measured out all those waters with the hollow of his hand!' I could not help being struck with the true wisdom thus embodied in the simplicity of childhood."

The same remark may be applied to an anecdote related in a letter to another friend, about this time. "Charles" (then eight years old) "is sitting by me, reading Warton's Death-bed Scenes, with which he is greatly delighted. One of the stories is called 'The Atheist,' and on my explaining to him what the word meant, which he did not know, he exclaimed, with the greatest astonishment" Not believe in a God, mamma!—Who does he expect made the world and his own body?" "