CROCODILE SHOOTING. The first time a man fires at a crocodile is an epoch in his life. We had only now arrived in the waters where they abound, for it is a curious fact that none are ever seen below Mineyeh, though Herodotus speaks of them as fighting with the dolphins at the mouth of the Nile. A prize had been offered for the first man who detected a crocodile, and the crew had now been for two days on the alert in search of them. Buoyed up with the expectation of such game, we had latterly reserved our fire for them exclusively; and the wild duck and turtle, nay, even the vulture and the eagle, had swept past or soared above us in security. At length the cry of Timseach, timseach was heard from half-a-dozen claimants of the proffered prize, and half-a-dozen black fingers were eagerly pointed to a spot of sand, on which were strewn, apparently, some logs of trees. It was a covey of crocodiles. Hastily and steadily the boat run in shore. R was ill, so I had the enterprise to myself, and clambered up the steep bank with a quicker pulse than when I first levelled a rifle at a Highland deer. My intended victims might have prided themselves on their superior nonchalance; and, indeed, as I approached them, there seemed to be a sneer on their ghastly mouths and winking eyes. Slowly they rose, one after the other, and waddled to the water, all but one, the most gallant or the most gorged of the party. He lay still until I was within a hundred yards of him; then, slowly rising on his fin-like legs, he lumbered towards the river, looking askance at me, with an expression of countenance that seemed to say,' He can do me no harm; however, I may as well have a swim.' I took aim at the throat of this supercilious brute, and, as soon as my hand steadied, the very pulsation of my finger pulled the trigger. Bang went the gun, whiz flew the bullet, and my excited ear could catch the thud with which it plunged into the scaly leather of his neck. His waddle became a plunge, the waves closed over him, and the sun shone on the calm water as I reached the brink of the shore, that was still indented by the waving of his gigantic tail. But there is blood upon the water, and he rises for a moment to the surface. A hundred piastres for the timseach!' I exclaimed, and half-a-dozen Arabs plunged into the stream. There! he rises again, and the blacks dash at him, as if he hadn't a tooth in his head. Now, he is gone, and the waters close over him, and I never saw him since. From that time we saw hundreds of crocodiles of all sizes, and fired shots enough at them for a Spanish revolution; but we never could get possession of any, even if we hit them, which to this day remains uncertain. I believe each traveller, who is honest enough, will make the same confession.-The Crescent and the Cross. AN OSTRICH CHASE. BOOKS. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds; and these invaluable means of communication are in reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us-give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society, in the place where I live.— Channing. THE POET'S WISHES. By H. BROWN, Author of The Covenanters,' &c. And leave me alone to stray; And the martyr's hallowed grave- And the thunder's gathering peal, Give me, oh give me, the God above; Will beam on my bosom with peace and love, Give me the hour of holy mirth That to sainted souls is given; A MOTHER'S LOVE. is neither to be chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience; she will surrender every pleasure to his enjoyment; she will glory in his fame, and exult in his pros. perity: and if adversity overtake him, he will be the dearer to her by misfortune; and if disgrace settle upon his name, she will still love and cherish him; and if all the world beside cast him off, she will be all the world The ostriches have already been peering over their shoulders at you for a considerable time past, and per- to a son that transcends all other affections of the heart. There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother ceiving, by your increased pace, that you are really in It earnest, they begin to travel at a rate that beggars all description, moving their pillar-like legs with a rapidity that might make you believe they were skimming above the ground, did not their great heavy toes make the dust and pebbles fly behind them, and create as much clatter as a horse in trotting. With their long, straight, slender necks reared high above the withered shrubs, and their delicate white plumes floating in the rude breeze of the desert, with long, hasty strides, here come the running ostriches,' and in ten seconds more they will cross the path from which, in another direction, you are urging your panting courser to meet them. A noble cock is leading, in stature some yard or so loftier than yourself, and clad in a suit of deep mourning, his sable shroud surmounted by three bunches of nodding plumes argent. Now you are nearly across his bows. Halt! Abandon your blowing steed, who, by-the-by, is not very likely to run away from you. As the gigantic bird thunders past, let drive at his swarthy ribs.—Major Harris's Hunting Expedition in South Africa.. to him.-Washington Irving. A GOOD CONSCIENCE. A good conscience is better than two witnesses. It will dispel thy fears, as the sun dissolves the ice; it is a staff when thou art weary, a spring when thou art thirsty, a screen when the sun burns thee, a pillow in death. Printed and published by JAMES HOGG, 122 Nicolson Street, all Booksellers. No. 2. EDINBURGH, SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 1845. CHAPTERS ON THE VICES. FALSEHOOD. ALL careful students of human nature must have remarked the indifference with which the majority of mankind are apt to regard even the most important truths, when addressed to them in abstract or general terms. We hold the pulpit in sincere respect, and concur cheerfully in the eulogy which the gentle and amiable Cowper has passed upon it. Still, with all deference to the many good and gifted men who fill it, it is possible that, as an instrument of doing good, it might, like most others, be somewhat improved. We think, for example, that, in the delineation of particular virtues or vices, there might be, with advantage, a little more going into detail-a condescending upon the precise shapes and phases under which these may be found in every-day life. The great majority of men feel comparatively at ease when they hear this and the other attribute of evil spoken of in vague and indefinite terms. Speakers of the class alluded to, however well-meaning, do, we fear, far less good than they may suppose. Unless there be some specialty of application, some effort to present a life-like portrait of the evil assailed, it is very far from being unlikely, that, in the andience, not a few may be committing the very sin, even while the preacher is exposing it. He may be denouncing avarice, while, in yon nook, the avaricious man is telling over his gold, and laying fresh schemes of aggrandizement. He may be denouncing malignity; but the malign, even while the tones are falling on their ears, are plotting new scandals to propagate as soon as they have crossed the church-door. He may inveigh against easy; but the eye of the envious is meanwhile fixed on some part of the dress, or property, or good fortune of their neighbour in the next pew. But, without saying more about the pulpit-and where there is so much to praise we are loath even to insinuate defect or blame-we hope the pages of the INSTRUCTOR will not be considered as trenching upon its sacred prerogatives should they occasionally deal out a few kindly bints respecting prevailing vices, or those moral graces so essential to our welfare and happiness. To aid in the smallest degree in correcting the faults of mankind, or strengthening their virtues, is no mean honour; and perhaps we may do some little good in this way, by a chapter, now and then, like that we propose at present to write, about one vice too prevalent, we grieve to say, in every circle of society-we mean falsifying. The forms in which this vice may be met with are PRICE 1d. more numerous than perhaps most people imagine. There are falsifiers-for we drop the harsher and more vulgar term-so young that they can with difficulty lisp the syllables in which they vend their untruths. There are others so old that their tongues almost deny them utterance when they propagate their slanders. There are others so fair, that, when one hears them circulating their calumnies, he cannot help recalling a certain proverb about a 'jewel of gold in a swine's snout.' The beggar tells a tissue of falsehoods when craving alms at your door; and some would not care to say that courtier and falsifier are all but convertible terms. In point of fact, it is not easy to tell, even when we would-to borrow the legal phrase the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The statement, without suppression or exaggeration, without a shade to suit the views of him who utters it, is not, kind reader, a commodity you are every day meeting with. The motives to falsehood are numerous; and the forms in which this vice may be found among men are consequently so too. There is one whom, in the absence of a better term, we may call the silent falsifier. There may be more wicked ones than he, but assuredly there is none meaner: he is an ungallant and ungenerous soul; he has a paltry, cringing heart in his bosom; there is nothing noble and magnanimous about him; he is deficient in all great qualities; he is not a brother to his race. Fie on him! rather than provoke the frown of some one whose favour might be of service to him, the wretch will hear, without defending them, his old father defamed, or shame cast on the grey hairs of her who bore him. Your mute falsifiers do a world of mischief in their own petty way. They hear your character assailed; circumstances stated to your disadvantage, which they well know to be an utter perversion of the truth; impressions conveyed to one or more listeners which they are quite aware are both false and injurious: a word from them might silence the detractor; but no; they are either glad to hear you defamed, or it is their interest that your reputation should be suspected, or they tremble to incur the displeasure of the party traducing you, and they are as quiet, as immoveably taciturn, as if they had been born dumb. Who says that these men are not falsifiers? Who refuses our right to class them with the vile herd of slanderers? It is a nasty heresy that a man may surely hold his tongue if he pleases. Proverbially, silence and assent are the same thing. There are times when not to speak out in defence of our opinions, is to prove recreant to them; and so, too, there are times when not to speak out in defence of our friend is foully and ignobly to slander him -to rob him of that good name, compared with which, Shakspeare truly says, a man's purse is but trash. Your silent falsifiers go farther at times. There are many ways in which they evince how willing they are to wound, though afraid to strike. Heaven save us from the men who shake the head, shrug the shoulders, give the piteous whine, or put on the rueful aspect -all of which, when the fabrication is going round, are but different ways of saying, it is very bad, and but too true! are plentiful in our times too. They sacrifice truth at the shrine of worldly aggrandizement; they tell lies to fill their pockets; contract heavy guilt, that, like Whang the miller, they may have the exquisite pleasure of thrusting their hands into a heap of gold up to the elbow. There were, in the time of the king we have named, the seller, who, when disposing of his goods, greatly overpraised them; and the purchaser, who, to get them at a lower price, did exactly the reverse. Thus falsehood went on, out in the market, and on both sides of the counter-and so it does still. Oh! but the maxim is current in the world, that a man wont thrive now-a-days if he be sternly honest and unswerving in his regard to truth. Now, there is no use in making the world worse than it is. Rich knaves there are, no doubt; they are the exception, not the rule, however; and were there a window in their bosoms, and were you, gentle reader, allowed to look through it, you would pity them, and call them poor indeed.' The shortest and easiest road to wealth is clearly that pointed out by honesty and worth. Is there a merchant in your community who is known to give his candid opinion of the quality of his goods— known neither to over-praise nor over-charge-who gives the same article at the same price to the injudicious and skilful alike? Be sure, other things being equal, that man is a thriving man; his shop is frequented by all who wish to deal fairly; his reputation is his bank. And so is it in every department of life. There is, if men would believe it, no need for lying; the arrangements of Providence are not such, that if a man be truthful and honest he must needs starve, and that the deepest rogue will infallibly be the most prosperous. 6 But of all kinds of falsifiers the malicious is the most detestable. A poet of our own day has designed slander the 'foulest whelp of sin.' A malicious falsifier-that is, one who invents and propagates lies, with the view of injuring the peace, prosperity, or honour of another-is almost the biggest reproach to his species we know of. He looks with a jaundiced eye on all around him; his weal is the woe of others; he sleeps not except he has done mischief;' he lives upon the calamities and misfortunes of mankind; worth, fame, talent, if possessed by those around him, only serve to provoke his resentment towards them, and call forth his slanders. He is a moral assassin; and, if character be more sacred than life, the malign traducer of it is every way as loathsome a being as he who sheds the blood of the innocent. We stop not to enlarge this picture. It is a sickening thing to investigate deformity. The poet we have just quoted has said with truth and power: The vain falsifiers form a numerous class. It is easier to keep one's temper serene when speaking of this class; for, except when their own claims happen to come into competition with those of others-which, however, is frequently the case-they are not addicted to detraction. The truth is, they are rather fond of the idea that all the world are rich, and respectable, and happy, were it for no other reason than this, that they feel it rather creditable to themselves that they belong to so excellent a community. As for traducing their neighbours, if you take care not to push the claims of the latter too eagerly, so as to bring them into close rivalry with their own, they will scarcely say a bad word against any one, finding that to be a sufficiently fertile topic on which Lord Byron has shrewdly remarked, most men are fluent, none agreeable-we mean, self. The vain, taken as a class at least, have too much to say about themselves to have leisure for discussing the character of their acquaintances; but their besetting sin leads to falsehood of another kind. Excessive vanity and the truth-telling habit can scarcely be found in the same individual. Every conceited person is, we may almost say, of necessity a falsifier. His ridiculous fictions are just the fuel to his vain imaginations; his lies, if we may so express ourselves, are so many imps going about seeking 'what they can devour as provender to his voracious vanity. There are few who are not in some degree censurable on this score. Whose conscience does not accuse him with having occasionally perverted the truth, that he might be thought richer, more talented, or more benevolent, than he really is? But while most men err thus in some measure, there are not a few who go to great extremes. Their vanity so beguiles them into dissimulation and falsehood that they come to lose all sense of the distinction between what is truth and what is not. Listen to them in the social circle. How inflated their tone! How extravagant their statements! How they deal in superlatives! What playthings they make of themselves to the discerning and quizzical! Do they talk of their strength? you would fancy they could heave mountains. Of their swiftness of foot? they could vie with the mountain roe. Of their talents? you feel that you have the honour to sit side by side with another Milton, or another Locke. Of their wealth? they are a match for the Rothschilds. Of their connexions? who There are other forms of this prevailing evil on which ever heard of such prosperous mortals? They are all we do not dwell at present. Those we have sketched are people of fashion and fortune-all above dependence—perhaps the most common. May we give a kindly hint all shining in the upper circles-their carriage just left or two to those who happen to glance at this page? Have the door as you entered-of course you have heard of a passionate attachment to the truth. Never cross its the immense accession to their income they got t'other sacred line to advance your interests, gratify your vanity, day! or injure the man you love least. Check, in all over whom you have influence, the slightest symptom of the vice in question. The habitual falsifier will not escape detection even in this life, and, when detected, he will be held in universal contempt. Shun paltry equivocation on the one hand, and inflated exaggeration on the other. Forget not that it is the intention to deceive that makes the lie, and not the mere phraseology in which it may be couched. The truth-telling habit gives to one so sunny a bosom, and earns for him, eventually, so fair a reputation, that, irrespective of higher motives, it is well worth being cultivated. Crabbe's noble peasant,' Isaac Ashford, was a model in this respect : Addison somewhere remarks, that if there be anything which makes human nature appear ridiculous to beings of superior faculties, it must be pride, well aware as they are of the vanity of those little supernumerary advantages on which men plume themselves. But one does not need to be an angel to be astonished and diverted at the silly self-conceit, so fruitful in falsehood, which has been described. The violation of truth, too, in this instance, is all the worse that it panders to another vice, namely, extravagant self-appreciation. It is a wicked daughter feeding a bad mother. The avaricious falsifiers are anything but few in number. It seems they were not unknown in the days of Solomon. The wise man sketches them thus, with his graphic pen: It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer; but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth.' They The man, In whom this spirit entered was undone; 'Of no man's presence Isaac felt afraid, At no man's question Isaac looked dismayed: BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. MRS HEMANS. If anything should increase the admiration with which men ought to regard the softer and fairer sex, it must be the approaching a genuine female poet. Unfortunately, there must be also something of fear and shame in such an approach-especially a personal one. Admiration at a distance is as much as the most of men are disposed to give to an accomplished woman. They be gin presently to smell blue-lights, as they imagine, if you set them down on a sofa with a woman in whose heart the spirits of chivalry, and romance, and gushing poetry have taken up their abode. Oh, no! stick to your stocking, my dear,' is the silent prayer of their hearts; 'leave literature, except in its most diluted forms, to those who have been accustomed to regard it and everything else as under their sceptre, and to be approached by you only with permission! Let such thoughts be far from us in sitting down with the richesthearted, though not, it may be, the most masculineminded of our poetesses. Mrs Hemans, whose maiden name was Felicia Dorothea Browne, was born in Duke Street, Liverpool, on the 25th of September, 1794. Her father was an Irishman, her mother a descendant of a Venetian house; so that, if there is character in country, she had the right blood' in her veins for a poetess. She would often, half-playfully, half-proudly, allude to her origin, as accounting for the strong tinge of romance, which, from infancy, pervaded every thought, word, and aspiration of her daily life; and for that remarkable instinct towards the beautiful, which rarely forms so prominent a feature in the character of one wholly English-born. As a child, it is easy to conceive that she must have been fascinating, with her long wavy golden hair, and brilliant complexion-so brilliant as to have forced the remark from one lady who saw her, and which stuck in her heart like a barbed arrow, That child is not made for happiness, I know: her colour comes and goes too fast.' She was restless in her girlhood-read aloud well, was fond of reciting poems and fragments of plays-used to climb an apple-tree to enjoy Shakspeare in security; and while so sensitive and delicate physically as to refuse to submit to the suffering of being ear-ringed, her mind wrought incessantly upon scenes of heroic enterprise and military glory. She composed poetry long before she entered her teens; and though neither ricketty nor pettish, was precocious in many of her sentiments and impulses. Her first early volumes were published when she was fourteen and eighteen. Here is a 'Fairy Song' by the girl : All my life is joy and pleasure, My food, the crimson, luscious cherry, When Dorothea was little more than five years of age, failure in business had led her father to remove his family from Liverpool to North Wales-to an old, solitary, and spacious mansion, lying close to the sea-shore, and fronted by a chain of rocky hills-just such a place as would encourage the development of her poetic fancies. Grwych, Bronwylfa, Wavertree, and Rhyllon, were the four homes of different periods of her life. She was married in 1812, when about eighteen years age, to Captain Hemans of the fourth regiment, which introduces us to a second era of her life. This union closed before its natural period. There was a separation, as in the case of Lord Byron and his wife, though the genius this time was with the lady, and possibly the faults also, if faults they may be called, where a steed of real nature. Family differences, however, are not a subthe sun happens to be yoked with a courser of less etheject for the public to pry into; though the very natural supposition is, that there must be something blameworthy in cases like the present, where there were four or five children before the separation. It is not discoverable that her retirement from the world, in consequence of this, damped the ardour, or hurt the sweetness of her song. The darkening of her cage seems rather to have thorn is at its breast, her music gained both in power enriched her notes. Like the nightingale when the languages, though she had never been at school; and and tenderness. She mastered most of the continental translated portions of their poetry (especially the German) in that manner which only a poet can do. thrown on her own resources, with a copiousness that For seven or eight years after 1819, when she was would have done honour to Scott or Byron, and a melancholy tendency which belongs only to the bird who has lost her mate, she produced her successful prize poems of Wallace' and Dartmoor; she poured forth dern Greece,' the Vespers of Palermo,' the Welsh her Tales and Historic Scenes'-the 'Sceptic,' 'MoMelodies,' the 'Siege of Valencia,' the Voice of Spring,' cords of Woman.' Her dramatic poem, the Vespers of the Hebrew Mother,' the Forest Sanctuary,' the 'RePalermo,' was not successful on the stage. She was too single-hearted to make a good dramatist-to throw herself into the variety of characters requisite for an effective tragedy; but her lyrics are almost perfect in their kind, and have taken up their home in the hearts of the people. Few more genuine outbursts of feeling have been ever poured forth than the three following verses of Mozart's Requiem : Though In the autumn of 1828, Mrs Hemans went to reside at Wavertree, a village near Liverpool, more convenient for the education of her boys than suitable to the taste of the poetess of home and its affections. brought into closer contact with the great world, she had evidently no great liking for it, with its visitors and their albums, its ceremonial dinners and amusements, its business-bustle and vulgarity. But she who could take refuge in her delightful correspondence with such women as Miss Mitford, Joanna Baillie, Mrs Howitt, and Miss Jewsbury, could well afford to do without it. The world demands too much of stateliness and cold decorum, and small pretty accomplishment, for a woman of such imagination and tenderness to enjoy it. Accordingly she felt a strong disposition sometimes to rush from its dinner-parties without bidding the company good bye; its albums were a nuisance to her; and its artificial adulations something worse. She had abundant resources within herself, however, as her 'Songs for Music,' her Songs of the Affections,' and other publications, testify. Her 'Song of Night' is full of lofty imagery and striking contrast; and may, perhaps, be singled out as one of the best lyrics written by Mrs Hemans about this time ! I come with every star; Making thy streams, that, on their noon-day track, Give but the moss, the reed, the lily, back, Mirrors of worlds afar. I come with mightier things! Who calls me silent? I have many tones. The dark skies thrill with low mysterious moans, Borne on my sweeping wings. I come with all my train; Who calls me lonely? Hosts around me tread: I that, with soft controul, Shut the dim violet, hush the woodland song- Early in the summer of 1829, Mrs Hemans visited Scotland, accompanied by her two sons. She had scarcely arrived in Edinburgh, when, her name being recognised at her hotel, a plentiful bouquet of flowers was brought into her room-a touching and delicate present to one who literally had a passion for flowers. A more strange compliment was paid her, when she was abruptly accosted in the Castle Garden by an unknown lady, who approached her, as she said, 'under the assurance of an internal sympathy that she must be Mrs Hemans.' Another, when introduced to her, fancifully asked, 'whether a bat might be allowed to appear in the presence of a nightingale? She visited Roxburghshire and Abbotsford, strolled in the Rhymours' Glen with Sir Walter, got wet feet in the haunted burn, tore her gown in making her way through thickets of wild roses, stained her gloves with wood strawberries, and had her face scratched with the branch of a rowan tree-all which things were very delightful in the company of Sir Walter Scott. She set herself down on a grass bank in one of their rambles; and Sir Walter, both in honour to her and love for the grass, set himself down by her side -told her tales of elves, and bogles, and brownies-repeated snatches of mountain-ballads-and talked of signs and omens, and all things wonderful and wild.' Early in the summer of 1830, Mrs Hemans visited Wordsworth and the lakes. She had long loved and reverenced the author of the Excursion'-the poet who has sanctified the most common incidents of daily lifefound tongues in trees, sermons in stones, and good in every thing.' She regarded him with far other feelings than she did Byron; for the one could raise storms, but the other could calm them.' 'There is a daily beauty in his life, 'she says in one of her letters, which is in such lovely harmony with his poetry, that I am thankful to have witnessed and felt it. He gives me a good deal of his society, reads to me, walks with me, leads my pony when I ride, and I begin to talk with him as with a sort of paternal friend. The whole of this morning he kindly passed in reading to me, a great deal from Spenser, and afterwards his own Laodamia,' my favourite 'Tintern Abbey,' and many of those noble sonnets, which you, like myself, enjoy so much. Yesterday evening he walked beside me, as I rode on a long and lovely mountain path, high above Grasmere Lake. I was much interested by his showing me, carved deep into the rock, as we passed, the initials of his wife's name, inscribed there, many years ago, by himself; and the dear old man, like 'Old Mortality,' renews them from time to time. I could scarcely help exclaiming, Esto perpetua! She took apartments at the Doves' Nest,' and resided there for a time, soothing her weary spirit, notwithstanding the 'persecution of the wicked world,' with its notes, parcels, and dispatches, its young ladies with pink parasols, and its Americans asking her reception of a pair of Indian mocassins, with her illustrious name' interwoven in the buckskin of which they were composed, with wampum beads. After remaining for some weeks at Doves' Nest, Mrs Hemans was induced again to visit Scotland. At Milburn Tower she formed a friendship which led her to visit Dublin on her way homeward, and ultimately to decide on removing her residence from Wavertree to that city, where she passed the four last years of her life. Her health, from the time she left England, became more and more impaired by the recurrence of severe attacks of illness, with periods of convalescence few and far between. But notwithstanding the palpitating affection of the heart with which she was often seized, the years spent by her in Dublin seem to have been among the happiest of her life. Her mind became graver, more serene, more consistently religious. She had learned patience and resignation in her dealings with the world-in communing with her art her mind was more than ever bent on devotedly fulfilling what she conceived to be its duties. The prevailing temper of her mind,' says Mr Chorley, 'may be also gathered, not merely from the poems she wrote but from the books in which she took her chief delight during the closing years of her life. She fell back with eagerness upon our elder English writers, without losing her pleasure in the works of such of her cotemporaries as she esteemed sound and genuine; and while a memorandum before me records the strength and refreshment she found in the discourses of Bishop Hall, and Leighton, and Jeremy Taylor-in the pages of Herbert, and Marvell, and Isaac Waltonin the eloquence and thought of two modern serious authors-I mean, the Rev. Robert Hall, and the accomplished and forcible author of the 'Natural History of Enthusiasm.' It speaks also of the gratification she derived from the translations and criticisms of Mrs Austin, from Mrs Jameson's liberal and poetical notices of modern art, and her characteristics of women; and it must not be forgotten, that, to the last, she took an extraordinary pleasure in all such works as describe the appearances of nature in the sketches of Gilpin, and White of Selborne, and Miss Mitford, and the Howitts. She used fancifully to call these her 'green books,' and would resort to their pages for refreshment, when her mind was fevered and travel-worn.' The Scriptures were her daily study, and the poetry of Wordsworth that which she relished most. Within a short period of her decease, the symptoms of dropsy, which had formerly appeared, abated. They were succeeded by hectic fever and delirium, the sure precursors of dissolution. On the 26th day of April she closed her poetical career by dictating the Sabbath Sonnet,' which will be read and remembered as long as her name is loved and cherished : How many blessed groups this hour are bending, Pour their fair children forth; and hamlets low, On Saturday the 16th of May she sank into a gentle slumber, which continued almost unbroken throughout the day; and at nine o'clock in the evening, her spirit passed away without pain or struggle. After all, as in many other cases, the best life of Mrs Hemans is to be found by reading her works. It is a cruel divorce to separate the woman and the poet. She will there make herself felt as a woman in whose heart there was a very passion for the beautiful, the romantic, and the chivalrous, accompanied with a motherly tenderness that led her to take delight in fashioning the hymn of childhood. She could revel in the national lyric, and enjoy the lispings of the infant mind. But trying to call up the tones and characteristics of her poetry that individualize her from her cotemporaries, there 11 |