that she can stop steam? But I said to my husband-goodness! but that would have been a wife for you. Why, she'd ha' ploughed ! and they say she mows her own grass, and digs her own cabbage and potatoes! Ha! ha! well, we see some queer 'uns here. Wordsworth should write a poem on her. What was Peter Bell to a political comicalist ?”

The good woman laughed outrageously at the images she had raised in her own mind, and infected by her mirth, as I had been by her melancholy, I bade her good bye. Her husband, a quiet man, sate all this time, and spite of all our talk, never for one moment looked up from his newspaper, nor uttered a syllable. Possibly he might be deaf; otherwise he was as impassive as an old Indian.

The warnings of failing health which often operate insensibly on the mind, seemed now to draw Mrs. Hemans towards the society of her younger brother and his amiable wife, who were then settled in Ireland, and were living at the Hermitage near Kilkenny, where Colonel Browne was acting as a stipendiary magistrate. Here she joined them, and from this point visited Woodstock near Thomastown, the residence of Mrs. Tighe, and where she is buried. At these places we must not linger. Her brother removed to Dublin, as Commissioner of Police, and she went there also. It was in 1831 that she took up her abode in Dublin. She first resided in Upper Pembroke-street; then removed to 36, Stephen's-green, and finally to 20, Dawson-street, still within a hundred yards or so of Stephen's-green.

It is needless to say that in Dublin Mrs. Hemans received all the respect that was due to her genius and virtues; but her health was so delicate, as to oblige her to live as quietly as possible. Her boys were now a good deal off her hands, or, rather, did not require her immediate attention. And she was enabled, the first autumn of her abode in Dublin, to make an excursion to the mountains of Wicklow. Dawson-street was well situated for quietness and airiness. Stephen's-green is one of the largest squares in the world, far larger than any London one. While she resided in it, she had a set of back rooms, the noise of Upper Pembroke-street having been too much for her. The College grounds, of great extent, are at the bottom of Dawson-street, this spacious green at its top. And near are Merrion-square, and the gardens of what was once the palace of the Duke of Leinster; so that no part of Dublin could offer more openness. Her lodgings in Dawson-street consisted of the apartments over the shop of the proprietor, Mr. Jolliffe, a very respectable tailor. These could, London fashion, be thrown into one drawingroom, but were generally used as two rooms; and in the back room she nearly always sate and wrote.

In 1833, her sister and brother-in-law arrived in Dublin, and Mrs. Hemans and they met after a five years' separation. The ravages of sickness," says her sister, "on her worn and faded form were painfully apparent to those who had not seen her for so long; yet her spirits rallied to all their wonted cheerfulness, and the powers of

her mind seemed more vivid and vigorous than ever. With all her own cordial kindliness, she busied herself in forming various plans for the interest and amusement of her visitors; and many happy hours of delightful converse, and old home communion, were passed by her and her sister in her two favourite resorts, the lawn of the once stately mansion of the Duke of Leinster, now occupied by the Dublin Society, and the spacious gardens of Stephen's-green."

In the gardens of the Dublin Society Mrs. Hemans took that cold which, seizing on an already enfeebled frame, terminated fatally. She had one day taken a book with her, and was so much absorbed by it, that she was thoroughly chilled by the autumnal fog; and, feeling a shudder pass through her frame, she hastened home, already filled with a strong presentiment that her hours were numbered.

In her illness, by which she was gradually wasted to a skeleton, she enjoyed all the consolations which affection can bestow. Her sister attended her assiduously, till she was called away by the serious illness of her husband. Her place was then tenderly sup plied by her sister-in-law, the lady of Colonel Browne; and her son Charles was with her the whole time; George, now a prosperous engineer, for some days; and Henry, then a schoolboy at Shrews bury, likewise, during the Christmas holidays. For a time she was removed to Redesdale, a seat of the Archbishop of Dublin, about seven miles from the city; but she returned and died in Dawsonstreet, on the 16th of May, 1835. During her last illness she wrote some of the finest poetry that she ever produced, especially that most soul-full effusion, Despondency and Aspiration; and the Sabbath Sonnet; which she dedicated to her brother, less than three weeks before her death, the last of her lays.

Her remains were interred in a vault beneath St. Ann's church, but a short distance from her house, on the same side of the street; where, on the wall under the gallery, on the right hand as you enter, you observe a tablet, bearing this inscription:" In the vault beneath are deposited the Mortal Remains of Felicia Hemans, who died May 16, 1835.

"Calm on the bosom of thy God.

Fair spirit, rest thee now;

Even while with us thy footsteps trod,

His seal was on thy brow.

Dust to its narrow house beneath,

Soul to its place on high!

They that have seen thy look in death
No more will fear to die."

The same vault, as nearly as possible three years afterwards, received the remains of her faithful and very superior servant, Anos Creer, a native of the Isle of Man, who had lived with her seven years, and, after her death, married Mr. Jolliffe, the master of the house. The worthy man was much affected in speaking of the cir cumstance, and bore also the highest testimony to the character of Mrs. Hemans, saying, "It was impossible for any one to know her without loving her." To such a tribute, what can be added! The perfection of human character is to excite at once admiration and lasting affection.

THERE is not much to be said about the homes and haunts of Mrs. Maclean, or, as I shall call her in this article, by her poetical cognomen, L. E. L. She was a creature of town and social life. The bulk of her existence was spent in Hans-place, Sloane-street, Chelsea. Like Charles Lamb, she was so moulded to London habits and tastes, that that was the world to her. The country was not to her what it is to those who have passed a happy youth there, and learned to sympathise with its spirit, and enjoy its calm. In one respect she was right. Those who look for society alone in the country, are not likely to be much pleased with the change from London, where every species of intelligence concentrates,-where the rust of intellectual sloth is pretty briskly rubbed off, and old prejudices, which often lie like fogs in low still nooks of the country, are blown away by the lively winds of discussion. Though descended from a country family, and spending some time, as a child, in the country, she was not there long enough to cultivate those associations with places and things which cling to the heart in after-life. Her mind, naturally quick, and all her tastes, were developed in the city. City life was part and parcel of her being; and as she was one of the most brilliant and attractive of its children, we must be thankful to take her as she was. It robs us of nothing but of certain attributes of the picturesque in the account of her abodes.

Her ancestors, it seems, from Mr. Blanchard's memoir of her, were, about the commencement of the eighteenth century, settled at Crednall, in Herefordshire, where they enjoyed some landed property. A Sir William Landon was a successful participator in the

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South Sea Bubble, but afterwards contrived to lose the whole patrimonial estates. A descendant of Sir William was the great grandfather of L. E. L. He was rector of Nursted and Ilsted, in Kent, and a zealous antagonist of all Dissent. His son was rector of Tedstone Delamere, near Bromyard, Herefordshire. At his death, the property of the family being exhausted, his children, eight in number, were left to make their way through the world as they could. Miss Landon's father, John Landon, was the eldest of these children. He went to sea, and made two voyages, one to the coast of Africa, and one to Jamaica. His friend and patron, Admiral Bowyer, dying, his career in the naval service was stopped. In the meantime, the next of his brothers, Whittington Landon, had acquired promotion in the Church, and eventually became Dean of Exeter. By his influence the father of the poetess was established as a partner in the prosperous house of Adair, army agents in Pall Mall. On this he married Catharine Jane Bishop, a lady of Welsh extraction, and settled at No. 25, in Hans-place. Here Miss Landon was born on the 14th of August, 1802. Besides her, the only other surviving child was a brother, the present Rev. Whittington Henry Landon.

In her sixth year she was sent to school to Miss Rowden, at No. 22, Hans-place, the house in which she was destined to pass the greater part of her life. This lady, herself a poetess, afterwards became Countess St. Quentin, and died near Paris. In this school Miss Mitford was educated, and here Lady Caroline Lamb was for a time an inmate. At this period, however, Miss Landon was here only a few months. She had occasionally been taken into the country to a farm in which her father was deeply interested, called Coventry Farm, in Hertfordshire. She now went with her family to reside at Trevor Park, East Barnet, where her education was conducted by her cousin, Miss Landon. She was now about seven years old, and here the family continued to live about six years. Here she read a great deal of romance and poetry, and began to show the operation of her fancy, by relating long stories to her parents, and indulging in long meditative walks in the lime-walk in the garden. Her brother was her companion, and, spite of her nascent authorship, they seem to have played, and romped, and enjoyed themselves as children should do. They read Plutarch, and had a great ambition of being Spartans. An anecdote is related of their taking vengeance on the gardener for some affront, by shooting at him with arrows with nails stuck in them for piles, and of his tossing them upon a quickset hedge for punishment,-most probably one of the old-fashioned square-cut ones, where they would be rather prisoners than sufferers. This man, whose name was Chambers, Miss Landon taught to read; and he afterwards saved money, and retired to keep an iun at Barnet.

Now she read the Arabian Nights, Scott's Metrical Romances, and Robinson Crusoe, besides a book called Silvester Trampe. This last professed to be a narrative of travels in Africa, and seems especially to have fascinated her imagination. No doubt that the united effects of this book, of other African travels, and of the fact of her father and one of her cousins having made voyages to that continent,

had no little influence in deciding the fatal step of marrying to go out to Cape Coast. To the happy days spent at Trevor Park, and the reading of books like these, always a period of elysium to a child, Miss Landon makes many references, both in her poems and her prose sketches, called Traits and Trials of Early Life. Some lines addressed to her brother commemorate these imaginative pleasures very graphically:

"It was an August evening, with sunset in the trees,

When home you brought his voyages, who found the fair South Seas.
For weeks he was our idol, we sailed with him at sea,

And the pond, amid the willows, our ocean seemed to be;

The water-lilies growing beneath the morning smile,

We called the South Sea Islands, each flower a different isle.

Within that lovely garden what happy hours went by,

While we fancied that around us spread a foreign sea and sky."

From this place the family removed to Lower-place, Fulham, where they continued about a year, and then removed again to Old Brompton. Miss Landon now gave continually-increasing signs of a propensity to poetry. Mr. Jerdan, the editor of the Literary Gazette, was a neighbour of her father's, and from time to time her compositions were shown to him, who at once saw and acknowledged/ their great promise. It does not appear very clear whether Miss Landon continued at home during this period-that is, from the time the family came to live here, when she was about fourteen, till the death of her father, when she was about twenty-but it is probable that she was for part of this time at the school, No. 22, Hans-place, which was now in the hands of the Misses Lance, as she says of herself,-"I have lived all my life since childhood with the same people. The Misses Lance," &c. However, it was at about the age of eighteen that her contributions appeared in the Literary Gazette, which excited universal attention. These had been preceded by a little volume now forgotten, The Fate of Adelaide, a Swiss romantic tale; and was speedily followed by the Improvisatrice. It was during the writing of this her first volume of successful poetry that her father died, leaving the family in narrow circumstances.

The history of her life from this time is chiefly the history of her works. The Improvisatrice was published in 1824; the Troubadour in 1825; the Golden Violet in 1826; the Venetian Bracelet, 1829. In 1830 she produced her first prose work, Romance and Reality. In 1831 she commenced the editorship of Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap Book, which she continued yearly till the time of her marriage-eight successive volumes. In 1835 she published Francesca Carrara; the Vow of the Peacock, 1835; Traits and Trials of Early Life, 1836; and in the same year, Ethel Churchill. Besides these works, she wrote largely in the annuals and periodicals, and edited various volumes of illustrated works for the publishers.

None of the laborious tribe of authors ever toiled more incessantly or more cheerfully than Miss Landon-none with a more devotedly generous spirit. She had the proud satisfaction of contributing to the support of her family, and to the end of her life