Wordsworth, whose friendship she regarded, and with reason, as one of the highest privileges she possessed, was the means of leading Mrs. Hemans to a more close and intimate acquaintance with the treasures she had hitherto reverenced rather with vague and general admiration than with earnest and individual study. How readily this obligation was acknowledged, appears in a letter, the date of which was considerably prior to that of Miss Jewsbury's visit to Wales.

"The inclosed lines,' an effusion of deep and sincere admiration, will give you some idea of the enjoyment, and I hope I may say advantage, which you have been the means of imparting, by so kindly entrusting me with your precious copy of Wordsworth's Miscellaneous Poems. It has opened to me such a treasure of thought and feeling, that I shall always associate your name with some of my pleasantest recollections, as having introduced me to the knowledge of what I can only regret should have been so long a Yarrow unvisited.' I would not write to you sooner, because I wished to tell you that I had really studied these poems, and they have been the daily food of my mind ever since I borrowed them. There is hardly any scene of a happy, though serious, domestic life, or any mood of a reflective mind, with the spirit of which some one or other of them does not beautifully harmonize. This author is the true poet of home, and of all the lofty feelings which have their root in the soil of home affections. His fine sonnets to Liberty, and indeed all his pieces which have

'Those addressed "To the Poet Wordsworth.”

any reference to political interest, remind me of the spirit in which Schiller has conceived the character of William Tell, a calm, single-hearted herdsman of the hills, breaking forth into fiery and indignant eloquence, when the sanctity of his hearth is invaded. Then what power Wordsworth condenses into single lines, like Lord Byron's curdling a long life into one hour!'

The still, sad music of humanity'—

The river glideth at his own sweet will'

'Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods'

and a thousand others, which we must some time (and I hope not a very distant one), talk over together. Many of these lines quite haunt me; and I have a strange feeling, as if I must have known them in my childhood; they come over me so like old melodies. I can hardly speak of favourites among so many things that delight me; but I think 'The Narrow Glen,' the 'Lines on Corra Linn,' the 'Song for the Feast of Brougham Castle,' 'Yarrow Visited,' and 'The Cuckoo,' are among those which take hold of imagination the soonest, and recur most frequently to memory.

"I know not how I can have so long omitted to mention the Ecclesiastical Sketches, which I have read and do constantly read, with deep interest. Their beauty grows upon you and developes as you study it, like that of the old pictures by the Italian masters."

In one of her letters of this autumn, Mrs. Hemans makes mention of an interesting visit she had received from the Poet Montgomery (not the new aspirant to that name, but the "real Peter Bell"), who had just

come from Snowdon, full of animation and enthusiasm. "He complained much in the course of conversation," she writes, "and I heartily joined with him, of the fancy which wise people have in the present times, for setting one right; cheating one, that is, out of all the pretty old legends and stories, in the place of which they want to establish dull facts. We mutually grumbled about Fair Rosamond, Queen Eleanor and the poisoned wound, Richard the Third and his hump back; but agreed most resolutely that nothing should ever induce us to give up William Tell.”

There was nothing she disliked more than the disturbance of any old associations, or the reasoning away of any ancient belief, endeared to our hearts by the childish recollections with which it is interwoven. "I admire your resolute spirit of faith," she once wrote to a friend who had been visiting some scenes consecrated by tradition; "for my part, so determined is mine, that if I went to Rushin Castle, I should certainly look for the giant, said to be chained and slumbering in the dark vaults of that pile."

She would often speak with delight of the taste she had discovered in Bishop Heber for fairy tales and fantastic legends; and it is needless to say how heartily she entered into the congenial predilections of Sir Walter Scott. Her own enjoyment of such fanciful creations was fresh and childlike. The "Irish Fairy Legends" were always high in her favour, and the "German popular Stories" were as familiar to her young auditors at the fireside readings, as to those of Mr Crabbe.1

1See the "Life of Crabbe,” p. 304.

"Alice my wife,

The plague of my life,"

was in quite as bad repute amongst them, as she could have been at Pucklechurch, and little voices would make the hearth ring with manly threats of "what I would do, if I had such a wife!"

"I am very much enjoying myself," she wrote in one of her notes from Wavertree, "in the society of certain Luft und Feuergeister, Wasser und Waldgeister, and Feen und Feldgeister,' introduced to me by the worthy Herr Dobeneck, in a book of Deutschen Volksglauben. These geister of his, are, to be sure, a little wild and capricious in their modes of proceeding; but even this is a relief, after the macadamized mortality in which one has to pass all the days of one's life. I like your superstition about good wishes, and am very much inclined to agree with him who says 'Es ist alles wahr wodurch du besser wirst.' " 3

There was one German tradition in particular, "Die Sage vom Wolfsbrunnen" (The Legend of the Wolf's Well,) which had made a deep impression upon her imagination, and at one time she had thought of making it the subject of a poem of some length; but the train of feeling it suggested was too painfully exciting, and she wisely decided upon laying it aside.1

1Air and Fire Spirits, Water and Wood Spirits, and Fairies and Field Spirits.

2 German Popular Superstitions.

3

Every thing is true by which thou art made better.

• The Wolfsbrunnen, a place of real existence, is situated in

a romantic little valley near Heidelberg. The secluded and

The time had now arrived for Mrs. Hemans's leaving Wales, and this removal, which had been contemplated at a distance with more of hope than of dread, proved in the reality a heart-rending trial, increased in bitterness, too, by the additional sorrow of parting with her two eldest boys, who were sent at this time to join their father at Rome. "I am suffering deeply," she wrote to her late kind hosts, "more than I could have dreamt or imagined, from the farewell sadness.' My heart seems as if a night-mare weighed

somewhat melancholy air of the spot accords well with the tradition belonging to it, which relates, that in ancient days, long before the building of the present Castle of Heidelberg, there existed, on the mountain where the ruins called the Jetthe Bühl are still to be seen, an enchanted Castle, which was inhabited by a maiden of surpassing beauty, generally regarded as a sorceress. A young hunter, named Ferrand, famed alike for his daring deeds and manly beauty, had one day the hardihood to penetrate into the magic precincts of the Castle. He became enamoured of the fair Enchantress, by whom his love was in time returned. Yielding to his incessant importunities that she would reveal to him the secret of her supernatural powers, she at last disclosed to him that she was not a fairy, but the daughter of a Northern King, and that it had been predicted at her birth that she was to become the prey of a wolf. Her mother, who was of Southern origin, had consigned her, when on her own deathbed, to the care of an enchanter, who had promised to transport her far from the rugged regions of the North. He had placed her in this Castle, and invested her with Talismans to ward off the approach of evil. These were the white bird which perpetually hovered round her, the girdle of gems which she always wore, and the golden Tiara which encircled her beautiful hair. But the imperious Ferrand insisted upon her throwing aside all these appendages, which he regarded as the spells of some malignant spirit, and making an assignation with