tells us, "drew down the animadversions of some self-constituted arbiter of taste." We never heard of any critics being constituted by royal patent, or any mode of popular election-certainly not by a committee of authors. Self-constituted! why did not the lady call him a self-conceited knave, while she was about it? Just or unjust, there would have been some meaning in the phrase, at least. We suspect, for our part, that these friends, "more partial than judicious," who published the rhymes of a young girl of fourteen in a quarto volume, were themselves strangely constituted arbiters

of taste.

Not long after this first publication of her poems, the next great event of her life took place her introduction to Captain Hemans. "The young poetess was then only fifteen, in the full glow of that radiant beauty which was destined to fade so early. The mantling bloom of her cheeks was shaded by a profusion of natural ringlets, of a rich golden brown; and the ever-varying expression of her brilliant eyes gave a changeful play to her countenance, which would have made it impossible for any painter to do justice to it." No wonder that so fair a being should excite the admiration of a gallant captain. And the love on both sides was ardent and sincere it supported the absence of three years; for Captain Hemans,

:

soon after their introduction, was called upon to embark with his regiment for Spain. On his return, in 1812, they were married. Of their domestic happiness, or unhappiness, nothing is said; but six years after, in 1818, we are simply told that the Captain went to Rome-and never returned. The separated pair never met again.

"To dwell on this subject," says her biographer, "would be unnecessarily painful; yet it must be stated, that nothing like a permanent separation was contemplated at the time, nor did it ever amount to more than a tacit conventional arrangement, which offered no obstacle to the frequent interchange of correspondence, nor to a constant reference to their father in all things relating to the disposal of her boys. But years rolled

on-seventeen years of absence, and consequently alienation; and from this time to the hour of her death, Mrs Hemans and her husband never met again."

We are not in general anxious to pry into the domestic afflictions of any pair whom wedlock has mismatched. If we feel a little curiosity to know more than the sister has told us, in this instance, it is merely from a wish to learn how far the poetic temperament of Mrs Hemans could be assigned as the real cause of her matrimonial unhappiness. Did the Captain grow weary of the society of one whose feelings were pitched in too high a key for him to sympathise with?-was there too much of poetry mingled with the daily food of life? «Men, by St Thomas! cannot live like bees.”

Did he yearn for something more homely, as she, on her side, yearned for something more elevated? Had

he been made to feel that he did not

approach the ideal of her imagination,

and that the admiration she once had

given was withdrawn? Or should we say of her, in lines of her own :

There are hearts So perilously fashioned, that for them God's touch alone hath gentleness enough To waken, and not break, their thrilling strings.

Of this perhaps some future biographer may tell us. There are many passages in her poetry which show all intense longing for the sympathy of other minds; which show that, while her feelings were of a rare order for their refinement and elevation, she yet sought-what for such a one it was difficult to obtain-for the kindred sympathy of others. She could not worship her goddesses alone. This tendency of mind many of her verses indicate; and there is one sweet little poem where, if our fancy does not mislead us, she secretly reproves herself for having exacted too much in this respect from others: we do not say from any one in particular, for the verses bear reference to a brother, not a husband. Yet some personal reminiscence, or regret of this kind, might lead to the strain of thought so beautifully expressed in the following lines:

KINDRED HEARTS.

Oh! ask not, hope not thou too much

Of sympathy below;

Few are the hearts whence one same touch
Bids the sweet fountains flow:
Few-and by still conflicting powers,
Forbidden here to meet ;

Such ties would make this life of ours
Too fair for aught so fleet.

It may be that thy brother's eye

Sees not as thine, which turns
In such deep reverence to the sky
Where the rich sunset burns:
It may be that the breath of spring,
Born amidst violets lone,

A rapture o'er thy soul can bring-
A dream, to his unknown.

The tune that speaks of other times-
A sorrowful delight!
The melody of distant chimes,

The sound of waves by night;
The wind that, with so many a tone,
Some chord within can thrill-
These may have language all thine own,
To him a mystery still.

Yet scorn thou not, for this, the true
And steadfast love of years;
The kindly, that from childhood grew,
The faithful to thy tears!

If there be one that o'er the dead

Hath in thy grief borne part,

And watched through sickness by thy bed--
Call his a kindred heart!

But for those bonds all perfect made,
Wherein bright spirits blend;
Like sister-flowers of one sweet shade,
With the same breeze that bend;
For that full bliss of thought allied,
Never to mortals given-

Oh! lay thy lonely dreams aside,
Or lift them unto heaven.

We follow no further the events of her biography. We have here all that reflects a light upon the poems themselves. That Welsh life among the mountains-the little girl with her Shakspeare in the apple-tree-that beauty of fifteen, full of poetry and enthusiasm and love-marriage-disappointment and the living afterwards, with her children round her, in a condition worse than widowhood; -here is all the comment that her biography affords on her sweet and melancholy verse.

And how vividly the verse reflects the life! How redolent of nature is her poetry! how true her pictures of mountain, and forest, and river, and sky! It requires that the reader should have been himself a long and accurate observer of rural scenes, to follow her imagination, and feel the truth of her rapid and unpretending descriptions.

It is singular how, without the least apparent effort, all the persons she brings before us are immediately localised on the green earth-trees wave around them, flowers spring at their feet, as if this were quite natural and unavoidable. How sweet a part does the quiet charm of nature take in the piece called

THE VOICE OF HOME TO THE PRODIGAL.
Oh! when wilt thou return
To thy spirit's early loves?
To the freshness of the morn,
To the stillness of the groves?
The summer birds are calling

The household porch around,
And the merry waters falling

With sweet laughter in their sound.
And a thousand bright-veined flowers,
From their banks of moss and fern,
Breathe of the sunny hours-

But when wilt thou return?

Oh! thou hast wandered long
From thy home without a guide;
And thy native woodland song

In thine altered heart hath died.

Thou hast flung the wealth away,
And the glory of thy spring;
And to thee the leaves' light play
Is a long-forgotten thing.

There is something very touching in the simplicity of these pleasures, contrasted with what imagination immediately suggests of the career and the tastes of the prodigal.

One great spectacle in nature alone, seems strangely to have lost its fascination upon our poetess - she never kindled to the sea. She seemed to view it as the image only of desolation and of ruin; to have associated it only with tempests and wreck, and have seen in it only the harmless waste of troubled waters. More than once she adopts a scriptural phrase"And there shall be no more sea," as an expression of singular joy and congratulation. We question whether a single reader of her poems has ever felt the force of the expression as she did. The sea, next to the sky, is the grandest and most beautiful thing given to the eyes of man. But, by some perverse association, she never saw it in its natural beauty and sublimity, but looked at it always as the emblem of ruthless and destroying power. In The Last Song of Sappho, it is singular how much more the dread

have no quarrel. It is, as we have said, without a grain of bitterness; it loves to associate itself with all things beautiful in nature; it makes the rose its emblem. It does so in the following lines to

THE SHADOW OF A FLOWER.
Twas a dream of olden days,
That Art, by some strange power,
The visionary form could raise

From the ashes of a flower:
That a shadow of the rose,

By its own meek beauty bowed,
Might slowly, leaf by leaf, unclose,
Like pictures in a cloud.

A fair, yet mournful thing!
For the glory of the bloom

That a flush around it shed,
And the soul within, the rich perfume,
Where were they?—fled, all fled!
Naught but the dim, faint line

To speak of vanished hours--
Memory! what are joys of thine?

Shadows of buried flowers!

We should be disposed to dwell entirely on the shorter pieces of Mrs Hemans, but this would hardly be just. There is one of her more ambitious efforts which, at all events, seems to demand a word from us. The Vespers of Palermo is not perhaps the most popular, even of her longer productions it is certainly written in what is just now the most unpopular form-yet it appears to us one of the most vigorous efforts of her genius. It has this advantage tooit can be happily alluded to without the necessity of detailing the plotalways a wearisome thing, to both the critic and the reader: every body knows the real tragedy of the Sicilian Vespers. The drama is unpopular as a form of composition, because the written play is still considered as a production, the chief object of which is missed if it is not acted; and the acting of plays is going into desuetude. When the acting of tragedies shall be entirely laid aside, (as it bids fair to be,)—that is, as an ordinary amusement of the more refined and cultivated classes of society-and the drama shall become merely a class of literature, like all others, for private perusal-then its popularity, as a form of composition, will probably revive. For there is one order of poetry-and

The opinion we have ventured to express on the inevitable decease of the acting drama—of tragic representations as a general amusement of an age increasing in refinement, will probably subject us, in certain quarters, to an indignant reproof. Shakspeare, and the legitimate drama! seems, with some, to have all the sacredness of a national cause. Shakspeare, by all means-Shakspeare for ever! eternally!-only we would rather read him — if we could creep up there with little Felicia Browne in the apple-tree. Shakspeare supports the stage so far as it remains supported-not the stage Shakspeare. And can he support it long? Consider what sort of amusement it is which tragic representation affords - for of comedy we say nothing-consider that it must either thrill us with emotions of a most violent order, (which the civilised man in general avoids), or it becomes one of the saddest platitudes in the world. Your savage can support prolonged ennui, and delights in excitement approaching to madness; your civilised man can tolerate neither one nor the other. Now your tragedy deals largely in both. It knows no medium. Every body has felt that, whether owing to the actor or the poet, the moment the interest of the piece is no longer at its height, it becomes intolerable. You are to be either moved beyond all self-control, which is not very desirable, or you are to sit in lamentable sufferance. In short, you are to be driven out of your senses, one way or the other. Depend upon it, it is a species of amusement which, however associated with great names - though Garrick acted, and Dr Johnson looked on is destined, like the bull-fights of Spain, or the gladiatorial combats of old Rome, to fall before the advancing spirit of civilisation.

But to Mrs Hemans' Vespers of Palermo. It was not the natural bent of genius which led her to the selection of the dramatic form; and when we become thoroughly acquainted with her temperament, and the feelings she loved to indulge, we are rather surprised that she performed the task she undertook with so much spirit, and so large a measure of success, than that she falls short in some parts of her performance. Nothing can be better conceived, or more admirably sustained, than the characThe ter of Raimond de Procida. elder Procida, and the dark revengeful Montalba, are not so successfully treated. We feel that she has designed these figures with sufficient propriety, but she has not animated them; she could not draw from within those fierce emotions which were to infuse life into them.

The effort to sympathise, even in imagination, with such characters, was a violence to her nature. The noble and virtuous heroism of the younger Procida was, on the contrary, no other than the overflow of her own genuine feeling. Few modern dramas present more spiritstirring scenes, than those in which Raimond takes the leading part. Two of those we would particularly mention one when, on joining the patriot-conspirators, and learning the mode in which they intended to free their country, he refuses, even for so great an object, to stain his soul with assassination and murder; and the other, where, towards the close of the piece, he is imprisoned by the more successful conspirators-is condemned to die for imputed treachery to their cause, and hears that the battle for his country, for which his spirit had so longed, is going forward. We cannot refrain from making a quotation from both these parts of the drama. We shall take the liberty of omitting some lines, in order to compress our extracts.

The conspirators have met, and proclaimed their intended scheme

That freedom should be won ?-Awake!—

awake

To loftier thoughts!-Lift up, exultingly, On the crowned heights, and to the sweeping winds,

Your glorious banner!-Let your trumpet's

blast

Make the tombs thrill with echoes! Call aloud,

Proclaim from all your hills, the land shall

bear

The stranger's yoke no longer !

is he

- What

Who carries on his practised lip a smile, Beneath his vest a dagger, which but waits Till the heart bounds with joy, to still its beatings?

That which our nature's instinct doth recoil from,

And our blood curdle at-ay, yours and

mine-

A murderer! Heard ye?-Shall that name

No other joy unblighted.

Pro. O, my son!

The time has passed for such high dreams as thine :

Thou knowest not whom we deal with. We must meet

Falschood with wiles, and insult with revenge.

And, for our names-whate'er the deeds by which

We burst our bondage-is it not enough
That, in the chronicle of days to come,
We, through a bright "For ever," shall be
called

The men who saved their country.
Raim. Many a land

Hath bowed beneath the yoke, and then arisen,

As a strong lion rending silken bonds,
And on the open field, before high heaven,
Won such majestic vengeance as hath made
Its name a power on earth.

Mon. Away! when thou dost stand
On this fair earth as doth a blasted tree,
Which the warm sun revives not, then return
Strong in thy desolation; but till then,
Thou art not for our purpose ;-we have need
Of more unshrinking hearts.

Raim. Montalba! know,

I shrink from crime alone. Oh! if my voice Might yet have power among you, I would

say,

Associates, leaders, be avenged! but yet
As knights, as warriors!

Mon. Peace! Have we not borne
Th' indelible taint of contumely and chains?
We are not knights and warriors: Our bright

crests

Have been defiled and trampled to the earth. Boy! we are slaves-and our revenge shall be Deep as a slave's disgrace.

Raim. Why, then, farewell: