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which seem to obstruct my onward path." These misgivings were but too well justified by the ultimate fate of the piece; but, as this remained in abeyance for two years longer, it will be again alluded to in the proper order of date.

Mrs. Hemans's familiar letters of this period, exhibit a singular mixture of maternal and literary anxieties. In one of them, she says-"I have not been able, I am sorry to say, to pay the least attention to my Welsh studies, since your departure. I am so fearful of not having the copying of the tragedy completed by the time my brother and sister return, and I have such a variety of nursery interruptions, that what with the murdered Provençals, George's new clothes, Mr. Morehead's Edinburgh Magazine, Arthur's cough, and his Easter holidays, besides the dozen little riots which occur in my colony every day, my ideas are

"Oh! what troubled billows," wrote she to an intimate friend, “have I launched my paper boat upon, in writing this play! If I get through them as well as we did through the awful hurricane, of which you have given us so many melancholy particulars, it will be marvellous indeed. We escaped wonderfully, and, strange to say, every one in the house but myself, slept quietly the greater part of the night, which, I think, argued great stupidity. For me, I have ‘given too many pledges to fortune,' as Lord Bacon says, to feel so tranquil, with such a dreadful pother o'er our heads;' and I must say, I never passed a night of such awful suspense. The deep, rosy sleep of the children quite affected me to look at. Heaven be praised! no accident of any serious consequence occurred in our neighbourhood, and I do think there never will be such a storm again, because the winds must have 'cracked their cheeks,' so as to be quite unable to blow any more."

sometimes in such a state of rotatory motion, that it is with great difficulty I can reduce them to any sort of order."

In another letter, she writes-"You will smile when I tell you of my having stolen time to-day from much more serious employments, for the very important purpose of making garlands for my little boys to dance with, as it is the birthday of my youngest."

About this time, the return of her sister from Germany, and the ample supplies of new books furnished to her by her eldest brother, then with the embassy at Vienna (the ever ready minister to her tastes, no less than the unfailing support in her trials,) induced her to devote herself with enthusiasm to the study of German, which from thenceforward she may be said to have taken to her heart with a kind of affectionate adoption. She never spoke of it without warmly acknowledging how many sources of intellectual enjoyment and expansion it had opened to her; and could well have understood the feelings of the celebrated Venetian paintress, Rosalba Carriera, who, as we are told by Mrs. Jameson,' used, after her return to Italy from Dresden, to say her prayers in German, "because the language was so expressive." In this predilection, as in every other, it was always a true pleasure to Mrs. Hemans to meet with a corresponding taste in any of her friends. In one of her letters, says-" "I am so delighted when I meet with any

she

1 See "Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad," vol. ii. p. 115.

one who knows and loves my favourite seelenvolle1 German, that I believe I could talk of it for ever." And, in another,—"I do assure you, that when any of my friends enjoy what has been a source of enjoyment to myself, I feel all the pleasure of a child who has found a companion to play with his flowers."

She in general preferred the writings of Schiller to those of Goethe, and could for ever find fresh beauties in Wallenstein, with which she was equally familiar in its eloquent original, and in Coleridge's magnificent translation, or, as it may truly be called, transfusion. Those most conversant with her literary tastes, will remember her almost actual, relation-like love for the characters of Max and Thekla, whom, like many other "beings of the mind," she had learned to consider as friends; and her constant quotations of certain passages from this noble tragedy, which peculiarly accorded with her own views and feelings. In the Stimmen der Volker in Lieder of Herder, she found a rich store of thoughts and suggestions; and it was this work which inspired her with the idea of her own Lays of many Lands, most of which appeared originally in the New Monthly Magazine, then edited by Mr. Campbell. She also took great delight in the dreamy beauties of Novalis and Tieck, and in what has been gracefully characterised by Mr. Chorley, as the "moonlight tenderness" of Oehlenschläger. Of the works of the latter, her especial favourite was Coreggio; and of Tieck, Sternbald's Wanderungen, which she often made her out-of-doors companion. It

'Full of soul.

was always an especial mark of her love for a book, and of her considering it true to nature, and to the best wisdom of the heart,' when she promoted it to the list of those with which she would "take sweet counsel" amidst the woods and fields.

But, amongst all these names of power, none awakened a more lively interest in her mind, than that of the noble-hearted Körner, the young soldierbard, who, in the words of Professor Bouterwek, "would have become a distinguished tragic poet, had he not met with the still more glorious fate of falling on the field of battle, while fighting for the deliverance of Germany." The stirring events of his life, the heroism of his early death, and the beautiful tie which subsisted between him and his only sister, whose fate was so touchingly bound up with his own, formed a romance of real life, which could not fail to excite feelings of the warmest enthusiasm in a bosom so ready as hers, to respond to all things high and holy. The lyric of The Grave of Körner, is, perhaps, one of the most impressive Mrs. Hemans ever wrote. Her whole heart was in a subject which so peculiarly combined the two strains dearest to her nature, the chivalrous and the tender.

"They were but two, and when that spirit pass'd,
Woe to the one, the last!"

That mournful echo

“They were but two," was,

1 "One of our poets says, with equal truth and beauty, 'The heart is wise.' We should be not only happier but better if we attended more to its dictates."— Ethel Churchill, by L. E. L., vol. i. p. 234.

by some indefinable association, connected in her mind with another and far differing brother and sister, called into existence by the magic pen of Scott. The affecting ejaculation, "There are but two of us!" so often repeated by the hapless Clara Mowbray in St. Ronan's Well, was frequently quoted by Mrs. Hemans as an instance of the deepest pathos. The lyric in question was, it is believed, one of the first tributes which appeared in England, to the memory of the author of The Lyre and Sword, though his name has since become "familiar in our ears as household words," A translation of the Life of Körner, with selections from his poems, &c., was published in 1827, by G. F. Richardson, Esq., whose politeness in presenting a copy of the work to Mrs. Hemans, inscribed with a dedicatory sonnet, led to an interchange of letters with that gentleman, and was further the means of procuring for her the high gratification of a direct message, full of the most feeling acknowledgment, from the venerable father of the hero, who afterwards addressed to her a poetical tribute from Theodore Körner's Father. Her pleasure in receiving this genuine offering was thus expressed to Mr. Richardson, who had been the medium through which it reached her. "Theodor Körner's Vater!-it is, indeed, a title, beautifully expressing all the holy pride which the memory of die treuen Tödten1 must inspire; and awakening every good and high feeling to its sound. I shall prize the lines as a relic. Will you be kind enough to assure M. Körner, with my

1 The faithful dead.

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