ART. IV. Memoir of the Life and Writings of Mrs. Hemans. By her SISTER. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard. 12mo. pp. 317. 1839.

THIS is precisely such a biography as we should desire of such a woman as Mrs. Hemans; a sister only, and very few sisters, could have written it. It is a graceful and feminine portraiture of a most graceful and feminine mind, which we cannot doubt, after making all due allowances for the partiality of a sister's pencil, gives us a faithful likeness. It is an exquisite painting in enamel, which flatters by its very delicacy. It is in this character of a true picture, that the volume before us has delighted us; as a mere narrative, it possesses no extraordinary interest; the few events that make up the life of a retired woman, derive their interest from her character; and it is the charm of her character that alone makes us eager to follow the fortunes of Mrs. Hemans.

From her earliest childhood she appears to have been marked by singular personal attractions, and extraordinary tokens of genius. Her memory was almost miraculous, and her imagination and sensibility made her life a perpetual dream of excitement. Verse seems to have been in a manner the spontaneous expression of her mind; her first volume was printed when she was only fourteen years of age. Music and drawing were natural and favorite accomplishments. She grew up the admiration and delight of all around her. She married early, and unhappily; lived a life of keen trial, intermixed with the highest enjoyment; and died at last, it may be said, of exhaustion, at the age of forty-one; having won the purest, most affectionate, and most enduring fame on earth, and showing herself exalted by the influences of religion, amid her severe discipline, to a peculiar ripeness for heaven.

Mrs. Hughes has already been favorably known, as one who can herself weave sweet verses, and clothe verse in the sweet harmonies of music. It was she who composed the noble strains of that anthem, "The Pilgrim Fathers," to which the patriotic hearts of New England thrill, as to some native and familiar air, some "Ranz-de-vaches" of American mountains. She has now done what she ought to do, in giving this bright sketch to the world. She has told us much that we like to know of the haunts and habits of that youth passed in roman

tic Wales; of the wonderful memory, the immense reading, the graceful accomplishments, the filial and maternal tenderness, the real sufferings of her gifted and idolized sister: -and she has told it all in such a manner as to rivet the reader to her pages. Even when the volume is closed, we can hardly break the spell, and perceive that a bright haze still hangs between us and the subject. We hardly dare own that, on reflection, we miss certain prosaic details, which might seem important to the practical-minded American reader. For instance, we dare not wonder what Mrs. Hemans was among the duties of the ménage, to which her circumstances, at some period of her life, (especially when she was left motherless,) must have required her attention. We content ourselves with saying, How could she be everything? And we are satisfied to look upon her as posterity will, as Mrs. Hemans, the Poetess; a graceful, powerful, lovely development of female mind, which, with its melancholy elegance, dwells in our fancy, an image by itself; such as to her was the sad, fair statue of the Grecian Sappho.

It is a great satisfaction to find the life and character of a distinguished author harmonize with his works. This gratification may be particularly enjoyed in the case of Mrs. Hemans. It is delightful to lay down the poems, and, while still glowing under their tender and exalting influences, to look at the woman. We take them up with redoubled interest, after having satisfied ourselves, that they were the genuine outpourings of her mind; that they embodied, as well as words could do, her true soul; that she was in real life, and in plain prose, a high-minded, refined, affectionate, and virtuous woman. To have found her otherwise would have been a severe shock; yet sometimes in perusing the volume before us, we have been almost startled at finding how completely she was all that our imaginations had painted her.

Sad, however, very sad, are some of the convictions which these pages have deepened within us. Unconsciously, we believe, the writer has disclosed to us some of the deeper recesses of a highly poetical nature, and a solemn voice speaks to us thence, like the voice of a caverned prophetess, full of unearthly wo. Believing the character of Mrs. Hemans to be one of the most complete manifestations of that nature, which was ever unfolded under earthly influences, we rise from its study with a confirmed impression, that such is not the constitution of mind most replete with the elements of happiness. It appears essen

tial to the poet, that Imagination should take the lead of all the other faculties; they must not be destroyed nor impaired, or the sanity of the mind is affected; but they must be subservient to this power, and, as it were, work under it. Memory, the reasoning power, in the operations of a poet's brain are subjected to the imagination, and toil for it. The visible world and all events act more forcibly on his imagination than on any other of his mental powers; it is that which instantly takes up and deals with every new idea that enters through the senses; the more rapidly and ably this is done, the stronger, probably, are the poetical conceptions formed. But the fine poet is seldom a judicious man; especially if he separate himself from the every-day world, and become an author by profession. Things do not appear to such a mind, as they do to one whose powers are more equally balanced; they do not appear as they really are. So supremely wise and good are the Divine arrangements, that no coloring, no transposition of the relative importance of things by the most gifted fancy, can improve them. He, therefore, has the best chance of happiness, who most clearly sees all things as they really are. It is the partial, exaggerated, or distorted perception of what is, that constitutes the chief mental suffering of man. And the highly imaginative are most constantly doomed to struggle with such false perceptions.

It is vain to say, that their glowing fancies supply them with felicities, which real life cannot furnish; no sane mind can derive permanent happiness from illusion; and when a bright illusion fades, the darkness seems intense by the contrast. The pleasant, sober, every-day light suffices not for him, who has imbibed a morbid taste for watching the meteoric flashes which light up with dazzling, but evanescent glory, the shadowy world of Imagination.

With this mental temperament is usually connected a peculiar delicacy of physical organization; almost invariably in woman, very frequently in the robuster frame of man. The great Scottish bard has been quoted as a complete exception; but what finally prostrated him in his fresh old age? His highly imaginative genius indeed appeared upon earth, in a robust frame; the constitution he inherited from a hardy ancestry, and the habits of his early life might be thanked for this; and to it, we may undoubtedly attribute much of that healthy and happy tone of disposition, to which he modestly alludes, in

drawing some comparison between himself and Lord Byron. But look, as years roll on, how the sad law works! Certain objects attained an undue importance in his mind; to his excited imagination it became worthy of a life's labor to recall the spirit of past ages, and revive, in his own person, the Scottish baron of old, with his stately halls and broad domains, all to be proudly transmitted to an elder son. And in the carrying out of this poetical idea, he saw not things as they really were, and marked not the machinery of modern society, as it moved on about him, till his own worldly fortunes were drawn in and crushed in some temporary derangement of its wheels and springs. Then, with views and efforts of which no ordinary prosaic mind would have dreamed, he attempted intellectual labors, by which even his iron nerves were shattered. We believe that his health yielded, not to external, but to internal, to mental causes, as completely as Mrs. Hemans's; and that his premature decay, for such it was, may be first indirectly traced to the undue action of the Imagination, which involved him in difficulties that made such fatal efforts needful; and then more directly to the effects of mental labor on the bodily frame.

In Mrs. Hemans, however, the peculiar physical constitution, of which we speak, seems to have been marked from early life. We should call it nervous, if it were not that the misapprehension of its real meaning has created a prejudice against the word. In persons of the temperament to which we allude, we should say that their Maker had interwoven the soul more closely with the physical fibre; that the clay seemed more completely informed with the spirit, so that every nerve more quickly and keenly conveyed the impression made on it to the invisible perceptive power. Of such it is that we say in common parlance, they are "all soul." Such may enjoy greatly; but they also must suffer greatly. They usually suffer much from that indescribable state of existence, called being - not sick, but in feeble health. Jar but the mind with a rude touch of anxiety or grief, and some part of the frail machinery of the body is sure to give way, as if it had been struck or blighted. Truly and beautifully has a living poet said, "In general, Nature appears to have a prodigal delight in inclosing her costliest essences in the most frail and perishable vessels." Who cannot recall from the annals of poets innumerable instances of the temperament we have described? It is true, thousands have been so afflicted, who never wrote a line of verse; but of all

those who have been endowed with poetic genius, there are few who have not suffered from it. The cause is to us, of course, inscrutable; but we have been struck with the fresh and strong illustration of the fact afforded us, in the book we have just read with such profound interest.

We said that the convictions it has deepened in us are sad, because it is sad to find that the exquisite delight afforded by such poetry must be so dearly bought; it is sad to find, that, in the nature of things, a being, gifted with power to confer pleasure of so exalted a nature, could enjoy only an interrupted happiness in this world. Her power sprang from those sensibilities which are connected with a delicate physical constitution, thereby insuring the depressing reaction of feeble health on the mind; those sensibilities, which feel acutely every earthly ill, and are perpetually craving a peace and purity not to be found on earth. Throughout all Mrs. Hemans's writings, her poems, and her letters too, we catch glimpses of this source, whence flowed such bitter waters. In the depths of her soul were longings and aspirations unknown to common minds; and at which the world is apt to sneer, because it can neither feel nor comprehend them. But to minds of a kindred nature, though humbler order, much of her power is found in these same intense longings, under whose influence she sketched imaginary virtue, peace, and beauty, such as she yearned to behold in reality. We gaze, we melt in tender admiration, under the spells of her genius; but not being able to look beyond what she has the skill to show us, and not being visited with such unearthly aspirations as hers, we admire in peace; we are spared all that she suffers from her distinct but tantalizing glimpses of the desirable and unattainable.

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And, strange as it may seem in those who claim the capacity of appreciating and enjoying Mrs. Hemans's wonderful poetry, we are content to be so spared. We think few individuals of well-disciplined minds and right views would not pause, should it be permitted them to decide whether or not a soul precisely like that of Mrs. Hemans, with all its gifts and accompanying susceptibilities, should tenant the earthly frame of an infant daughter. Parental pride, ambition, might dictate one prayer; but would not the pure, thoughtful, disinterested love, which seeks only the real happiness of its object, prompt quite another? We are very far from meaning to derogate from the estimate formed of Mrs. Hemans's character, even by an