at all approach desolation, and yet gives it something of touching interest. You see every where traces of love and care beginning to be effaced-rose trees spreading into wildness-laurels darkening the windows with too luxuriant branches; and I cannot help saying to myself, 'Perhaps some heart like my own in its feelings and sufferings has here sought refuge and found repose.' The ground is laid out in rather an antiquated style, which, now that nature is beginning to reclaim it from art, I do not at all dislike. There is a little grassy terrace immediately under the window, descending to a small court with a circular grass plot, on which grows one tall white rose tree. You cannot imagine how I delight in that fair, solitary, neglected-looking tree. I am writing to you from an old-fashioned alcove in the little garden, round which the sweet briar and moss rose tree have completely run wild; and I look down from it upon lovely Winandermere, which seems at this moment even like another sky, so truly is every summer cloud and tint of azure pictured in its transparent mirror." "I am so much delighted with the spot, that I scarcely know how I shall leave it. The situation is one of the deepest retirement; but the bright lake before me, with all its fairy barks and sails, glancing like things of life,' over its blue water, prevents the solitude from being overshadowed by any thing like sadness." "I visited Elleray, Professor Wilson's house' (though 'Now the residence of Thomas Hamilton, Esq. he is not now at home), a few days since. The scene around it is in itself a festival. I never saw any landscape bearing so triumphant a character. The house, which is beautiful, seems built as if to overlook some fairy pageant, something like the Venetian splendour of old, on the glorious lake beneath." 66 "I should have thanked you sooner for all those spirit-stirring tales from the early annals of England: they will afford me food for thought some future day: but I think my spirit is too much lulled by these sweet scenes, to breathe one song of sword and spear until I have bid Winandermere farewell.” "There is balm in the very stillness of the spot I have chosen.' The majestic silence of these lakes, perfectly soundless and waveless as they are, except when troubled by the wind, is to me most impressive. Oh! what a poor thing is society in the presence of skies and waters and everlasting hills! You may be sure I do not allude to the dear intercourse of friend with friend;-that would be dearer tenfold more precious, more hallowed in scenes like this." In dwelling upon these records of pure and healthful enjoyment, poured forth so freshly and freely from the ever-gushing fountain of her heart, it is difficult to repress the natural pangs that arise, of sorrowful yearning and tender pity, for one who, with feelings 1 "Where even the motion of an angel's wing Wordsworth. so attuned to the sweetest and holiest harmonies of life, was, by her troubled and bewildering lot, shut out from all but transient breathings, "few and far between," of "an ampler ether, a diviner air." Such instances are fraught with regrets to human hearts,— with sad and strange mysteries to mortal vision; regrets and mysteries which can alone be soothed and solved by unquestioning faith, and serene reliance on the good providence of God. A passage from the works of the late John Bowdler, bearing upon this subject, and quoted in one of her own letters, was appropriated by her with no less happy effect than fitting application. It is as follows:-"Could the veil which now separates us from futurity be drawn aside, and those regions of everlasting happiness and sorrow, which strike so faintly on the imagination, be presented fully to our eyes, it would occasion, I doubt not, a sudden and strange revolution in our estimate of things. Many are the distresses for which we now weep in suffering or sympathy, that would awaken us to songs of thanksgiving; many the dispensations which now seem dreary and inexplicable, that would fill our adoring hearts with thanksgiving and joy." The soothing and healthful repose which had been so thoroughly and thankfully appreciated, was, alas! not destined to be of long continuance. Subsequent letters speak of the irruption of parties "hunting for lions in dove's nests"- of a renewal of the "Album persecution" of an absolute Maelstrom of letters and papers threatening "to boil over the drawer to which they were consigned;" till at last the despair ing conclusion is come to, that "one might as well hope for peace in the character of a shadowless man as of a literary woman." How heartily could Mrs. Hemans now have repeated what she had written some months before, under the pressure of peculiar irritation "Do know the song you Where shall we bury our shame?' Change the last word into fame, and it will express all my present perplexities." On quitting her pretty Dove Nest' about the middle of August, Mrs. Hemans was prevailed upon to make a second visit to Scotland, chiefly in compliance with the urgent invitations of her kind old friend Sir Robert Liston, whose advanced age made it so improbable that she should have any other chance of ever seeing him again. On this occasion, she and her little "Carlo dolce," as some of her friends would affectionately call him, were every where received with the same gratifying distinction, and still more 1 Her residence at this fairy dwelling was pleasingly recorded by the magic pen of Christopher North, in the paper called, a "Day at Winandermere,” in Blackwood's Magazine, for September, 1830. He is describing the principal features of the landscape from one favourite point-"On the nearer side of these hills is seen stretching far off to other lofty regions-Hillbell and High Street conspicuous over the rest-the long vale of Troutbreck, with its picturesque cottages, in numbers without number, numberless,' and all its sable pines and sycamores; on the farther side, that most sylvan of all sylvan mountains, where lately the Hemans warbled her native woodnotes wild in her poetic bower, fitly called Dove Nest; — and beyond, Kirkstone Fells and Rydal Head, magnificent giants, looking westward to the Langdale Pikes, "The last that parley with the setting sun.' VOL. I.. -20 gratifying kindness, which had marked their sojourn in the North. Several of the visits were now accomplished which she had, at that time, been obliged to decline; particularly to those "stately homes of Scotland," Hopetoun House and Kinfauns Castle. During her stay at Milburn Tower, she formed a friendship with the family of the late J. C. Graves, Esq. of Dublin, who were Sir Robert Liston's guests at the same time; and having in view a visit to Wales in the course of the autumn, she was induced by them to carry this into effect by way of Dublin and Holyhead, instead of proceeding from Glasgow to Liverpool. Mrs. Hemans had been for some time possessed with the conviction that her situation at Wavertree was neither suitable to her own health, nor half so favourable a one as she had been led to hope, for the education of her sons. She had therefore found it necessary to contemplate another change of residence, and had once serious thoughts of establishing herself in Edinburgh; a plan which would have been, in many respects, most desirable; but the opinion of her medical friends was uniform and decided, that her constitution was totally unfit to brave the severity of a northern climate, and that, in fact, one winter, or rather spring, in Edinburgh, might be fatal to her. Having formed very agreeable impressions of Dublin on her present visit, and being much influenced by the encouraging reports she heard of its climate and educational advantages, as well as by the circumstance of her brother, Major Browne, being settled in Ireland, she now came to the determination of remov |