less and confiding spirit, whose bright, and kindly, and endearing graces they so faintly attempt to pourtray. It is acknowledged, indeed, that as to the points of highest moral interest and importance, little more than negative merit is thus attained, and very imperfect redress afforded to a memory on which such partial light had been thrown by previous delineations. But the deficiency is knowingly incurred, as preferable to the use of the only means by which the picture could have been made more complete. For it was in a great measure impossible to render available those positive testimonies to the generous feelings of her heart, and the high principles of her nature, which her correspondence with intimate friends amply supplies, without a breach of those confidences of home and friendship, which no precedent can justify, and which can be reconciled to the feelings of an English family by no increase of public admiration to an individual member, by no craving, however urgent or imperious, of the public taste. With a request, then, that the deficiency thus accounted for may be indulgently borne in mind, a close is now gladly put to these prefatory remarks, and the reader's kind forbearance bespoken for the other imperfections of a biographical sketch, which, it is needless to indicate, has not been drawn by the hand of an artist. FELICIA DOROTHEA BROWNE was born in Liverpool, on the 25th September, 1793. Her father, a native of Ireland, was a merchant of considerable eminence. Her mother, whose family name was Wagner, and who was of mingled Italian and German descent, was the daughter of the Imperial and Tuscan Consul at Liverpool. The subject of this memoir (the fifth of seven children, one of whom died an infant,) was distinguished, almost from her cradle, by extreme beauty and precocious talents. Before she had attained the age of seven, her father, having suffered commercial reverses, in common with many others engaged in similar speculations at that revolutionary era, broke up his establishment in Liverpool, and removed with his family into Wales, where, for the next nine years, they resided at Gwrych,' near Abergele, in Denbighshire, a large old mansion, close to the sea, and shut in by a picturesque range of mountains. In the calm seclusion of this romantic region, with ample range through the treasures of an extensive library, the young poetess passed a happy childhood, to which she would often fondly revert amidst the vicissitudes of her after life. Here she imbibed that intense love of Nature which ever afterwards "haunted her like a passion," and that warm attachment for the " green land of Wales;" its affectionate, true-hearted people -their traditions, their music, and all their interesting characteristics, which she cherished to the last hours of her existence. After the loss of her eldest sister, who died young, her education became the first care of a mother, whose capability for the task could only be equalled by her devotedness: whose acquirements were of the highest order, and whose whole character, presenting a rare union of strong sense with primitive single-mindedness, was an exemplification of St. Paul's description of that charity which "suffereth long and 1 The greater part of this old house has since been taken down, and Gwrych Castle, the baronial-looking seat of Lloyd Bamford Hesketh, Esq., erected on the opposite height. is kind," "seeketh not her own," "thinketh no evil.” Her piety was sober, steadfast, and cheerful; never displaying itself in high-wrought excitements or ostentatious professions, but silently influencing every action of her life, and shedding a perpetual sunshine over all which came within its sphere. How truly the love of this exemplary mother was returned and appreciated, may be traced in many affecting instances through the following pages, from the artless birthday effusion of the child of eight years old, to the death-bed hymn of agonized affection,' in the matured years of the daughter, herself a matron and a mother. And when that love had been sealed and sanctified by death, still more fervent are the yearnings breathed forth in the passionate adjuration to "the charmed picture" of the "Sweet face that o'er her childhood shone;" and last and deepest, and best of all, in the sonnet "To a Family Bible," in which the mourner, chastened yet consoled, looks back upon the days when her mother's lips were wont to breathe forth the sacred lore of those hallowed pages, and meekly and thankfully acknowledges it to have been— "A seed not lost-for which, in darker years, O Book of Heaven! I pour, with grateful tears, It may well be imagined how the heart of such a mother would be garnered up in a child so gifted as the bright and blooming Felicia, whose extraordinary quickness in acquiring information of every kind, was 1 "Hymn by a bed of sickness," written in January, 1827. not less remarkable than the grasp of memory with which she retained it. She could repeat pages of poetry from her favourite authors, after having read them but once over; and a scarcely less wonderful faculty was the rapidity of her reading, which even in childhood, and still more in after life, was such, that a bystander would imagine she was only carelessly turning over the leaves of a book, when, in truth, she was taking in the whole sense as completely as others would do whilst poring over it with the closest attention. One of her earliest tastes was a passion for Shakspeare, which she read, as her choicest recreation, at six years old; and in later days she would often refer to the hours of romance she had passed in a secret haunt of her own-a seat amongst the branches of an old apple-tree-where, revelling in the treasures of the cherished volume, she would become completely absorbed in the imaginative world it revealed to her.' The following lines, written at eleven years old, may be adduced as a proof of her juvenile enthusiasm. 1 An allusion to this favourite haunt will be found in the sonnet called "Orchard Blossoms," written in 1834. "Doth some old nook, Haunted by visions of thy first-loved book, Rise on thy soul, with faint-streaked blossoms white And the bee's dreamy chime? O gentle friend! The world's cold breath, not Time's, this life bereaves Of vernal gifts-Time hallows what he leaves, And will for us endear spring-memories to the end." SHAKSPEARE. I love to rove o'er history's page, Yet it yields me greater pleasure, Each various feeling to the heart! At about the age of eleven, she passed a winter in London with her father and mother; and a similar sojourn was repeated in the following year, after which she never visited the metropolis. The contrast between the confinement of a town life, and the happy freedom of her own mountain home, was even then so grateful to her, that the indulgences of plays and sights soon ceased to be cared for, and she longed to rejoin her younger brother1 and sister in their favourite 1 Claude Scott Browne, the brother here alluded to, who was one year younger than Mrs. Hemans, died at Kingston, in Upper Canada (where he was employed as a Deputy-Assistant Commissary General,) in 1821. "They grew in beauty, side by side, They fill'd one home with glee; Their graves are sever'd far and wide, The Graves of a Household. |