From the stars of heaven, and the flowers of earth, As they sweep in their course by vale and hill; CHAPTER XVII. THE POETESSES. A.D. 1835. PART I. Felicia-Dorothea Hemans. "But oh, the price of bitter tears, That throws at last o'er desert years, Like flower-seeds, by the wild wind spread, The soul whence those high gifts are shed And, who will think, when the strain is sung, What life-drops from the minstrel wrung MRS. HEMANS: The Diver.' FELICIA-DOROTHEA HEMANS. MR. GEORGE BROWNE, an eminent merchant of Liverpool, was by birth an Irishman, and traced his descent from a branch of the Sligo and Kilmaine family. In the year 1786, he married Felicia, daughter of Mr. BenedictPaul Wagner, the Imperial and Tuscan Consul-General at Liverpool, and of his wife, Miss Elizabeth Haydock, of Rivington, in the county of Lancaster. Mrs. Browne was a woman of superior understanding, highly-cultivated talents, and refined taste; and all the children of this marriage who attained maturity were distinguished by kindred qualities and accomplishments. Felicia-Dorothea, the fifth child, was born in Duke Street, Liverpool, on the 25th of September, 1793, and was early found to be endowed with the two most precious of all temporal giftsbeauty and genius. Mr. Browne having suffered a great reverse of fortune, in consequence of the commercial difficulties which attended the close of the last century, broke up his establishment at Liverpool, and removed in the year 1800, with his wife and family, to the sea-coast of Denbighshire, in North Wales, where he tenanted the solitary old mansionhouse of Gwrych, situated less than two miles to the westward of the little town of Abergele. The juvenile companions of Felicia Browne in this migration were her eldest brother, Thomas-Henry, born in 1787; her second brother, George-Baxter, and a sister named Eliza, her only surviving seniors; besides a brother named ClaudeScott, one year her junior, and a sister, Harriet-Mary, born in 1798, the youngest of the seven. Under the judicious instruction of her mother, Felicia Browne learned with facility the elements of general knowledge, evincing peculiar aptness for the acquisition of languages, for drawing, and for music; while deriving information with extraordinary quickness, clearness, and vividness of perception, from all things visible, audible, and tangible. The more she knew, the more she desired to know; and the eager spirit of inquiry was accompanied by ever-increasing ambition for the attainment of intellectual, moral, and religious excellence. A sensitive person, however ingenuous the natural disposition may be, is always influenced in the sort and degree of communicativeness by the characters of the friends in whom confidence is placed; so that to each will be imparted only that subject, and to that extent which is likely to meet with sympathy. A look, a word, a gesture, or the want of a look, a word, a gesture, will stop the flow, or stint its measure. Thus it happens that more or less reserve is maintained, even towards friends whom they dearly love, by the most spontaneous and guileless of human beings; for absolute and entire confidence being possible only in cases of perfect congeniality, can very rarely exist. Thoughtful children, whose knowledge of character is of course superficial, and who trust the most those on whose kindness they most rely, are often painfully shocked and disappointed at finding their minds' incipient workings despised, their questionings repelled, and their fresh feelings unshared by such friends. Happily for Felicia Browne, the singular combination in her mother's character of tenderness, intelligence, and judgment, encouraged confidence to the utmost; and while the gifted child poured out her thoughts and feelings, her difficulties and aspirations, she found habitually the sympathy of a maternal heart, and the kind guidance of a wise and pious counsellor. She needed no one to point out to her or to define for her what was praiseworthy, either in the things of sense, of intellect, or of moral feeling natural affection led her to love, to seek, and to seize upon it, even before the faculty of judgment came into exercise. Besides this kind of instinctive tendency towards noble, beautiful, and refined sights, sounds, and qualities, she possessed that precious privilege of genius which enables children to comprehend and to appreciate the high principles and sentiments of their teacher, and to answer like the tone of a musical instrument to the congenial touch. In the life of Mrs. Browne true religion was exemplified. She seldom spoke upon the subject, unless by way of direct instruction; but her habitual look of care was set aside, and her fine countenance brightened with serene joy, as she daily read the Bible to her children, and tried to impress upon her little Felicia, whose thoughts were often wandering after birds' nests and new-blown primroses in the dingles, the heart-touching truths concerning a Divine Creator, Father, and Saviour. Among the earliest impressions which the gifted girl received from the Scriptures, or probably from any book, were the pastoral images of patriarchal life, the tents, the palm-trees, the fountains of the desert, the rocks, the reposing flocks, and the slow procession of the loaded camels. The effect produced upon ordinary children by pictorial illustrations is much fainter and slighter than that produced upon Felicia Browne was by words heard and read; for out of those words her mind made pictures, vivid and durable enough to serve in after years as the basis of accurate descriptions. Her senses were acute, exact, and delicately fine; her temperament was sanguine, sensitive, and easily agitated, blending the liveliness, pathos, and piquancy of Irish music; her intellect was of that rare kind which, discerning things at a glance, and not by a process of reasoning, seizes on them and firmly grasps them as its own for ever. The six first years of her life, passed in wealth and ease, seem to have left only the broad general impressions that conveniences and elegancies were familiar and congenial to her habits and feelings, and that the absence of them was a deprivation. The earliest remembrances on which in after years she liked to dwell were those of the seashore at Gwrych, when listening to the cadence of the waves, and watching the reflections of the sunset on the |