during her last illness, and desire he might be assured how gratefully she cherished the remembrance of it.

Amongst other interesting acquaintances made by her at this time, was that of Mary Howitt, best known by her own sweet and simple designation, of whose writings she had long been a sincere admirer, and whose society derived an additional charm from her being the first member of the Society of Friends whom Mrs. Hemans had ever known personally, though she had been in correspondence with more than one of the fraternity. A still brighter smile of good fortune awaited her, in the unexpected arrival in Liverpool of her kind New England friends, Mr. and Mrs. Norton. They had written to announce their coming, but the letter had not been received, so that their appearance was quite unlooked for. "I assure you," wrote Mrs. Hemans, in detailing the lucky coincidences which led to this meeting, "the delightful surprise was almost too much for me. I had the greatest difficulty in refraining from tears when I first met them."

The short personal intercourse she was permitted to enjoy with these interesting friends, was a source of the truest gratification to her both in the reality and the retrospect. She had the pleasure of renewing it for a few days on her return into Wales, as, after making a tour through the most remarkable parts of Great Britain, they paid a visit to St. Asaph before re-embarking for America.

This period, so rich in friendships and recollections, was also the one which brought Mrs. Hemans into immediate communication with another bright spirit, now, like her own, passed away from earth. This

was the late Miss Jewsbury, afterwards Mrs. Fletcher -whose extraordinary mental powers, and lofty, ardent nature, have never been appreciated as they deserved-were never, in fact, fully manifested except to the few who knew her intimately. She had long admired the writings of Mrs. Hemans with all the enthusiasm which characterised her temperament; and having been for some time in correspondence with her, she eagerly sought for an opportunity of knowing her more nearly, and with this view, determined upon passing a part of the summer and autumn of 1828 in the neighbourhood of St. Asaph. No better accommodation could be found for her than a very small dwelling called Primrose Cottage, a corruption (meant, perhaps, for a refining) of its original appellation of Pumrhos (The Five Commons). The place in itself was as little attractive as a cottage in Wales could well be, and its closeness to the road took away even from its rurality; but it possessed the advantage of being not more than half a mile from Rhyllon; and it had its little garden, and its roses, and its green turf, and pure air; and these to an inhabitant of Manchester, which Miss Jewsbury then was, were things of health and enjoyment. Thither then she repaired, with the young sister and brothers to whom she had long and well performed the duties of a mother; and there Mrs. Hemans found her established on her own return from Wavertree at the end of July. It may well be conceived how soon a feeling of warm interest and thorough understanding sprang up between two minds so rarely gifted, and both so intent upon consecrating their gifts to the highest and holiest purposes. VOL. I.

14

Yet it was scarcely possible to imagine two individual natures more strikingly contrasted-the one so intensely feminine, so susceptible and imaginative, so devoted to the tender and the beautiful; the other endowed with masculine energies, with a spirit that seemed born for ascendency, with strong powers of reasoning, fathomless profundity of thought, and feelings, like those of her own Julia,' "flashing forth at intervals with sudden and Vesuvian splendour, making the beholder aware of depths beyond his vision." No less an authority than Mr. Wordsworth has said of her, that "in one quality, viz., quickness in the motions of the mind, she had, within the range of his acquaintance, no equal." With all this, she possessed warm and generous affections, a peculiar faculty for identifying herself with the tastes and predilections of those she loved, and in conversation, when embodying the conceptions of her own "ever salient mind" (to quote an expression from Bishop Jebb), a singular talent for eliciting thoughts from others, which reminded one of the magic properties of the divining rod. From early years she had had to contend with that precarious and suffering state of health, so often the accompaniment of the restless, ardent spirit, which

"O'er-informs its tenements of clay."

She came into Wales, indeed, completely as an invalid, but was soon sufficiently recruited to enter

1 In The Three Histories.

2

See the Note to the Poem of "Liberty," in the fifth vol. of Wordsworth's Poetical Works.

with full enjoyment into all the novelties around her, to pass long mornings in the dingle, to take distant rides on her donkey, surrounded by a troop of juvenile knights-errant, and to hold levees in the tent she had contrived as a temporary addition to her tiny dwelling, whose wicket gate can now never be passed, by those still left to remember the converse of those bright hours, without a gush of mournful recollections.

66

Many of the poems in her Lays of Leisure Hours, which she dedicated to Mrs. Hemans "in remembrance of the summer passed in her society," were written in this little cottage. Some of them were immediately addressed to her, particularly that "To an absent one;" and the first of the series of "Poetical Portraits," in the same volume, was meant to describe her. The picture of " Egeria," in The Three Histories, written by Miss Jewsbury some time afterwards, was avowedly taken from the same original; and allowing for a certain degree of idealization, is drawn with no less truth than delicacy, and may well claim an introduction in this place. "Egeria was totally different from any other woman I had ever seen, either in Italy or England. She did not dazzle, she subdued me. Other women might be more commanding, more versatile, more acute; but I never saw one so exquisitely feminine."

*

*

*

*

*

"Her birth, her education, but above all, the genius with which she was gifted, combined to inspire a passion for the ethereal, the tender, the imaginative, the heroic,-in one word, the beautiful. It was in

her a faculty divine, and yet of daily life-it touched all things, but, like a sun-beam, touched them with a 'golden finger.' Any thing abstract or scientific was unintelligible and distasteful to her; her knowledge was extensive and various, but, true to the first principle of her nature, it was poetry that she sought in history, scenery, character, and religious belief,poetry, that guided all her studies, governed all her thoughts, coloured all her conversation. Her nature was at once simple and profound; there was no room in her mind for philosophy, nor in her heart for ambition ;-the one was filled by imagination, the other engrossed by tenderness. She had a passive temper, but decided tastes; any one might influence, but very few impressed her. Her strength and her weakness alike lay in her affections; these would sometimes make her weep at a word, at others, imbue her with courage; so that she was alternately a falcon-hearted dove,' and 'a reed shaken with the wind.' Her voice was a sad, sweet melody, and her spirits reminded me of an old poet's description of the orange tree, with its

6

"Golden lamps hid in a night of green;"

or of those Spanish gardens where the pomegranate grows beside the cypress. Her gladness was like a burst of sun-light; and if, in her depression, she resembled night, it was night bearing her stars. I might describe and describe for ever, but I should never succeed in portraying Egeria; she was a muse, a grace, a variable child, a dependent woman, the Italy of human beings."

Miss Jewsbury's enthusiasm for the poetry of Mr.