Bangor is but a mile from the Menai Bridge, and is the usual limit of pleasuretravel in Wales. It is a wealthy-looking, tidy, and snug little town-a contrast, in every possible way, to the villages I had been travelling through for the last four or five weeks in Ireland. It was like white-washing one's eyes to take a walk in Bangor, and as the coach stopped half an hour, I indulged myself with that, and the purchase of a pair of woollen Welsh mittens, to pull on over my gloves in September-of all months in the year. A very picturesque church stands near the inn, but as I was making my way to it, a wrangle arose in the stable-yard, between the coachman and a "helper," and as I could moralize any time, but probably should never again have a chance to hear a quarrel in Welsh, I abandoned the church for the stable, and heard it out. Really, the tongue is a very "wonderful invention." I never hear a new language spoken without thinking its articulation more a miracle than How these Welshmen whipped over the consonants, to be sure!-(though I presume they are managed, as wise men manage difficulties-by going along as if they were not there.) To look at Welsh on paper, you would think it the last language a man could scold in without choking--yet I assure you that it came off the horse-rubber's tongue as voluble as the most unctuous Italian.

ever.

From Bangor we came into a very fine and wild gorge in the mountains, where the smooth road, cut out among the confused fragments of rock, under precipices and beside chasms and mountain torrents, looked more the work of magic than human labour. I don't know how it affects other people, but to me, the regular ten-miles-an-hour pace of a stage-coach through a ravine, where in every direction (off the narrow strip of road) it would take the legs of a Titan to climb over the heaped-up masses of rock at a mile a day-I say there seems to me a sort of mockery of the divinity of Nature in this-a practical laughing at her power, and scorning her entrenchments against intrusion. Owen Glendower would have thought, I make no doubt, that we should as soon pull the moon by the horns as travel through that gulf in a mail-coach. Alas! that neither heroes nor lesser people ever rise out of their graves to see how posterity gets on!

The road seemed to be amusing itself in chasing home one water-course after another, and as we ran down valley after valley, with the green hills rising on either side, and the bright water fuming and fretting to keep pace with us, I thought that each must be the prettiest in Wales, or in other words, that each was the famed vale of Llangollen. The coachman announced it at last, however, and I found that the river Dee, which is inlaid

through its bosom for 15 or 20 miles, is deeper down among the hills, of a fuller current, and of more tranquil and graceful windings than any river we had seen, and that exquisite cultivation was so blended with nature in the valley, as to leave nothing to wish for, but a home on any spot of it. It is, of a truth, a vale of incomparable sweetness and attraction; and there ends all chance of description-for, except a noble aqueduct which spans it from side to side near the town of Llangollen, there is nothing in it but a higher degree of all we call delicious and beautiful in nature. By the way, the driver showed me the house where lived the two celebrated recluses, who were no recluses at all, but a pair of visiting, gossiping, world-loving old maids, who thought with a certain author, that it was "the very devil to be growing old as a person of no peculiarity," and took this simple means of celebrity. It is a pretty village, Llangollen, and the coachman declared "with good emphasis and discretion" against the black chimneys of the manufacturing district that are gradually creeping up the valley. “Dang it!" said he, "it used to be some pleasure to tell a gemman on the box that this was the wale of Llangothlin, arter coming through that endless black pit of a Wolverhampton, but it's agoing to be just like it, and we shan't have no spot in the country that looks nice and nat'ral."

"Shrewsbury clock" was striking eight as we rattled into the narrow and ill-paved streets, and if the hotel had looked inviting, we intended here to have made a night of it. But we were driven into a filthy back-yard, and surrounded by a pack of besetting porters' grooms and beggars, and the ladies looked out of the coach-window, and said, "Dear! what a horrid place! ' So, though there might have been, and probably was, "the best hotel in the world" ten paces off, first impressions prevailed, and we kept on to Birmingham. Commend me to the landlady of the Swan Inn, in that city of buttons and hardware, for the best "spatchcock" (broiled chicken, with mushroom vinegar) that ever was sent up for a late supper.

Birmingham reminded me of Paris after an émeute-so much military show in the streets, and such unusually savage countenances among the people. I rambled about under an umbrella all the morning, and spent an hour, at least, admiring a company of Hussars, who were drawn up in the principal street.

We took the rail-cars at twelve, and reached London comfortably to dine, having seen the two sides of a ditch for a hundred and twenty miles. Such are the pleasures of travelling by railroad!

THE SCAR OF LEXINGTON.
BY MISS H. F. GOULD.

WITH cherub smile, the prattling boy,
Who on the veteran's breast reclines,
Has thrown aside his favourite toy,

And round his tender finger twines
Those scattered locks, that with the flight
Of four-score years are snowy white;
And, as a scar arrests his view,

He cries, "Grand-Pa, what wounded you?"

"My child, 'tis five and fifty years,

This very day, this very hour,
Since from a scene of blood and tears,
Where valour fell by hostile power,
I saw retire the setting sun
Behind the hills of LEXINGTON!
While pale and lifeless on the plain
My brothers lay, for freedom slain!

!

"And ere that fight, the first that spoke
In thunder to our land, was o'er,
Amid the clouds of fire and smoke
I felt my garments wet with
gore
'Tis since that dread and wild affray,
That trying, dark, eventful day,
From this calm April eve so far,

I wear upon my cheek the scar.
"When thou to manhood shalt be grown,
And I am gone in dust to sleep,
May freedom's rights be still thine own,
And thou and thine in quiet reap
The unblighted product of the toil
In which my blood bedewed the soil!
And, while those fruits thou shalt enjoy,
Bethink thee of this scar, my boy!

"But, should thy country's voice be heard
To bid her children fly to arms,
Gird on thy Grandsire's trusty sword;
And, undismayed by war's alarms,
Remember, on the battle-field,

I made the hand of God my shield!
And, be thou spared, like me, to tell
What bore thee up, while others fell!"

LIFE AND POETRY OF MRS. HEMANS. BY B. B. THATCHER.

Iris by no means necessary, for determining the credit which belongs to the works of Mrs. Hemans, to settle the precise rank she sustains in the poetical world. We would not compare her genius to that of Milton, or Shakspeare, or to any of the humbler members of the brotherhood of bards. There is no need, especially, of discussing the differences between her mind, as a woman's, and any other mind, as a man's. Enough for us, that she undertook what she was suited for; and that she persevered and succeeded. What she achieved, the world well knows, and it appears more abundantly, again, from the volumes before us. How she was enabled to

do so is another question; and, considering how important the labour was, how rarely attempted, and how still more rarely made available by those who have attempted it, a

question of no inconsiderable interest. The inspiration of religion, which so much sustained her, especially in her later days, does not, alone, furnish the explanation. She could not have succeeded, in her sphere, without this; but this was not enough. This was the soul of her art, but not the body. It was the tone of the harp of poesy,

"The old, victorious tone of prophet years," which she sought for, but not the harp itself, nor the "rekindled chords" which gave that "buried tone back to immortal words."*

We shall not undertake, however, to analyze her intellect. Genius-a genius for the department, which, wisely following its own strong instinct, she engaged in, was indisput ably hers. How far and how it was peculiarly what we understand by a female genius, so to speak-in what respects it was, especially, what we should call a genius of feelingit might interest some to inquire. An exquisite electric sensibility, certainly, was a part of it. A vast energy of enthusiasm was another. It is not all that feel quickly, who feel deeply also. The volume of responding fervour, in her heart, was equal to the tremulous aspen delicacy of its susceptibilities. These qualities were enough to make hers the poetry of feeling, as it was. Without them, her imagination was active and daring enough to have made it ideal; but this faculty was disciplined and countervailed, as it was, to act the part of a kindred counsellor, more than of either a haughty master, or a reckless or rebellious slave. It added richness, variety, splendour, dignity, when wantedas wanted, to what was true, pure, and warm before.

But the point to which we wish, principally, to call attention here, is the science and skill of Mrs. Hemans, as a poetess. She made a business of her art, and made herself conversant with it. We do not settle the ab. solute amount, or the comparative respecta bility of her original powers, in general; but she used and magnified whatever she had. Her professional proficiency was adequate to her high religious principle. Indeed, in no small degree, it was the effect of that principle. She appreciated, as Milton did, the demand which her glorious mystery made upon her for the utmost use of her best faculties; and conscientiously, and with set end and aim, like his, she undertook to qualify herself for doing, with all her might, what her hands might find to do. She not only wrote religiously, but religiously prepared herself to write. She thought, read, studied, practised, suffered, with that view.

We apprehend she may not universally have received, in this particular, the honour she deserves; and it is no such trivial or usual one, as to be past over with a word.

* Devotional Sonnets,

The great error of literary genius, has been, to trust in genius. It has not only lacked moral principle, but intellectual principle, business principle, also. It has disparaged labour, skill, science;-all that a sound education implies; perhaps despised them; neglected them, at all events. Milton knew better, and practised accordingly. He la boured and loaded himself down, till, (as Hazlitt somewhere says,) any ordinary genius would have been crushed under the enormous burthen. His was more than ordinary, and it was extraordinary in scarcely any thing more than in its prodigious power of application and appropriation. How much he owed to it, and how much the world owes, we need not say.

So.

Milton knew better; but how few of the moderns have followed his example. How few of these have the power of perseverance; and have persevered;—and have lived to do How few, too, who devote themselves to literature, have devoted themselves to this branch of it alone. No other woman, to our knowledge, has done so, but Mrs. Hemans, to any considerable extent. Of her it may truly be said, that she lived and died for her profession. How much she was indebted, in the outset, to her Italian extraction, on the mother's side, for a poetical temperament, we cannot say. Her propensities, however, were early nurtured, and her habits of industry well established. The years of her infancy and youth were passed in the midst of the most beautiful scenery of Wales; and the free gratification and culture of her love of "nature, in its visible forms," under these circumstances, combined with her other studies, rapidly advanced her intellect, to what, in some situations, would have been considered a precocious maturity. The influence of these earliest associations was permanent, and gave a colour to her life. "The spirit of the solitude," she says, in one of her latest

sonnets

"Fell solemnly upon my infant heart,

Fall on my waken'd spirit, there to be
A seed not lost; for which, in after years,

Oh book of Heaven! I pour, with grateful tears, Heart blessings on the holy dead and thee!" Numerous allusions throughout her poems, and more particularly several of them which our readers will remember as expressly suggested by juvenile attachments-as well as the spirit of her works, universally, in no small degree-attest the openness with which her childish mind received the influences that surrounded it, and the deep and ineffaceable traces which they left behind them. We might easily confirm this view of the subject more definitely, and at large, from a little volume of her effusions, written between the ages of eight and thirteen, mentioned, but not included in the edition before us, which was published, now not far from thirty years since, at Liverpool, by a very liberal subscription. It was much admired at the time, and was judged to be, as it was, indicative of a mind remarkably poetical, though, of course, yet juvenile. Not many copies of it, we presume, are now extant, the authoress having subsequently made an effort to suppress it ;-a feeling which we feel bound, at present, to regard.

The perseverance with which she latterly followed out this beginning, when left to her own resources more exclusively for she was, from the first, to a considerable degree, self-educated-will best be learned from the result, as it appears in her productions. The mere amount of her poetry, itself-considering only its general excellence, finish, and variety-when we bear in mind the long period of abstinence which succeeded her first publication—the ordinary cares of a married life, for a mother, in no opulent conditionand, finally, the fact, that she died, at last, in the very bloom of her maturity (a little over forty years of age)-the mere amount of her compositions, we say, speaks in behalf of her wonderful application. She wrote, at last, with great facility, indeed. Six of her songs,

Into my being since it breathed that air."

The domestic education was fortunately in unison with the rest; judicious, tender, and devotional. This, too, may be gathered from her own declarations, and a solemn lesson do they furnish to mothers of the value of the first instruction they bestow. "Her accents, gravely mild"-we read in her sonnet to the old Family Bible, which was destined to contribute so essentially to the spirit and success of her future efforts

"Breathe out thy love-whilst I, a dreaming child,
Wander'd on breeze like fancies, oft away,
To some lone tuft of gleaming spring-flowers wild,
Some fresh-discovered nook for woodland play,
Some secret nest;-yet would the solemn word,
At times, with kindlings of young wonder heard,

tional Lyrics, we have been recently informed by good authority, she composed one morning before rising. Every day, she sometimes declared, in the last years, she wrote more easily, though with more pain. But this circumstance does not derogate from the merit of her labour. If she did not need to work so hard as some, to do better than they could

and to come off, indeed, with no small credit-it was so much the more laudable in her, that she did not yield, as such writers are commonly ruined by doing, to the temptation of facility itself. The truth is, however, that this was an acquisition in a great degree. Her constant advance in her art, from first to last, shows how much it was so. She did need to work, and did work; and one of the legitimate results of her application

was a gradually gathered principle (so to speak) of accumulated and always available power, on the interest of which she could sometimes well and wisely live. Persons who choose to call this an extemporaneous faculty-the inspiration, or the improvisation of genius-may do so if they will. Call it what they will, however, it is the result of education and exertion. The only necessary difference between such an investment of industry and an ordinary one, are, first, that genius will be industrious to a better purpose, generally, than mere mind without it can be, for there is as much room for the play of genius, in the effort we call industry, as in most others and secondly, that whereas the labour, in one case, immediately precedes the effect, in the other, it precedes it at more or less of an interval, perhaps, of years, and gaining, thereby, also, some incidental advantages in the establishment of tracks of thought, and the seasoning of materials, and habits, which depend, essentially, on the lapse of time. But who would think of citing such an intellect, as an instance of the success of genius without its labour? Who would argue that a large property was a mere matter of accident, because the owner, after working for forty years to collect a fortune, is able to live on the interest of his money Was Mr. Webster's great speech in reply to Mr. Hayne, in the memorable debate upon Foote's Resolution, an extempore speech? Or were the materials so, which gave it value? Would it, or they, have been so, had the notice been but an hour? Certainly not. Mr. Webster could not and cannot make a speech substantially extemporaneous-an argument, certainly not-upon such a subject. His mind is essentiaily as ready for it at one time as another. It is filled with the data, and disciplined to use them. And this is the result of labour. It is the object of labour. It should be its highest praise; and intellectually, the highest praise of genius. It was so with Mrs. Hemans; and here is an excellence, which some of her admirers, we fear, will be slow to emulate, of prime importance as it is. They must make up their minds, however, to delve. There is no other way. It is not, only, as Degerando maintains, a virtue, and a harmony, in the great concert of life, which fills the temple of the world, but a necessity, also. Happy is it for those who learn early that it is so, and who labour as they learn.

?

Look, again, at the express evidences of her reading. The Latin and French she was partly taught in addition, of course, to the Welsh and English. The Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and German, she taught herself, and that, thoroughly, as her translations are sufficient to indicate; to say nothing of the spirit of the literature of these languages visible in her works, or of the vast

aid she derived from them, and especially the German, in the improvement of her splendid powers of expression. The Swedish, also, if not some other tongues, she began to study in later days, and was, for some time, in the habit of exchanging works with a distinguished correspondent, in that country, with the same view. Her general reading must obviously have been immensely extensive. Her poems are full of it, but more especially they show her intimacy with history, biography, and poetry. To American literature, she was, by no means, a stranger, but the circumstance of a favourite sister,* of a temperament much like her own, having travelled and lived a good deal in Germany, led her to be more particularly interested in the German authors; next to which she delighted in the old Moorish and Spanish legends of the chivalrous ages. Something of this appears in her Songs of the Cid, a character whose noble qualities she admired so much as to be accustomed to call him, familiarly, "her Cid." Schiller, we believe, was her German, and Dante her Italian favourite. In her own language, we are inclined to believe that Shakspeare was, more than any other classic, her text-book. In early years, at least, it was so, and pleasant anecdotes are told, still, by those who remember her at that period, of her romantic devotedness to his pages. A favourite apple-tree might still be found, where was established an eyry of hers, resorted to for this purpose, at an age quite juvenile enough to make such a sally excusable, even in the eyes of those who are content to ponder the subtle wisdom of the Bard of Avon in a more common-place and dignified position. Milton, particularly, we think there is intrinsic evidence to show, she made a study of, at an after period.

66

The German music, also, she was passionately fond of, and, indeed, her enthusiasm for all harmony was unbounded. We have heard she used to say, it was a part of her life." She played the piano, and was taught the harp also, by an old Welsh minstrel, but generally, did not care to be versed in the science, and was not; so that, although she composed a good deal of music, and, we believe, some portion of that to which her lyrics have been attached, it seemed to come to her by inspiration almost, and was arranged into bars by a friend, more skilful than herself.

Some persons may be interested to know, that another of her practices was the keeping a sort of common-place book, upon princiciples, however, of her own, in which she had extracts of such passages, in all her reading, as particularly arrested her attention. The quantity as well as kind of this literature, which she thus collected, was one of * Miss Browne that was-now Mrs. Hughes, of Wales.

the most striking indications of her habits of
intelligent and indefatigable application. Not
to dwell on the subject, however, more mi-
nutely, what an admirable spectacle do we
here behold, of a most sensitive, tender, en-
thusiastic mind, resolutely bent on a labori-
ous system of self-discipline, such as she
knew to be indispensable to that success in
her profession, with which alone an ambition
or a conscience like hers could be content. A
noble ambition it was, and worthy of all imi-
tation as well as praise ;-
;-an ambition, not so
much for present popularity or excitement of
any sort, as for the approbation of the good
and
the judicious," come when or whence
it might; and this most of all, not for its
own sake so much as for the evidence it
should furnish of pleasure imparted, and
benefit rendered to her race. "Not for the
brightness of a mortal wreath," was the
poet's living as well as her dying hymn-
"Not for a place mid kingly minstrels dead,

But that perchance, a faint gale of my breath,
A still, small whisper in my song hath led,
One struggling spirit upwards to thy throne,
Or, but one hope, one prayer;-for this alone
I bless thee, Oh my God!"

Magnificent ambition! Would that all, as capable as she was of filling it, might with the same spirit, set themselves to do so. Those, of course, who can depend less upon native gifts than she could, should depend upon making the best of what they have, still

more.

A word on another point of importance, as it seems to us, not often sufficiently considered; we mean the individual, circumstantial experience of Mrs. Hemans, as a part of her poetical education. This is a delicate subject, we are aware. Most of it was only known, in any practical sense, to herself, and most of the rest of it-such as we allude to---concerns any body else but little, excepting for the illustration it furnishes, in the connection referred to above. It may be proper, however, to advance the opinion, that the poetry of Mrs. Hemans is not only the poetry of a female mind,-for we believe in the doctrine of sexes in minds;-but, that it is much more than this. It is the poetry of a woman-a mature woman; and still farther, of one who had fully and rightly sustained her share, in the active and passive practical duties, the female as well as the human duties, of the sex. She was a wife, a mother, the educator of her own children; and in these capacities, and because of these, as well as out of them, and in others, she had done and suffered her share at least, and her nature was legitimately developed and disclosed in consequence, and in just proportion. Those circumstances, it seems to us, were a most essential part of her poetical education. They enabled her, not only to write more truly, more feelingly, which is the same

thing-the particular experience of the characters she lived herself; but to write better upon all subjects, to imbibe them all with a spirit of experience. She was aware of it, we doubt not, and meant that they should be so; and ever rejoiced, it would hardly be too much to say-rejoiced with a more than religious resignation, in some of the trials, that, met as they were meant to be, tended not less to her professional ability, than to her personal improvement at large.

We will not follow out this notion with details, which happen to be within our knowledge. This is no place for it. Her works are full of the evidence of it, and not unfrequently in them, indeed, are express allusions to the fact. That beautiful piece, the Diver, founded upon the text, which she quotes from Shelley,-"we learn in suffering what we teach in song"-is an instance in point. The "Dying Hymn" is another. The "Vespers of Palermo," might be studied for a complete theory on the subject of that strength

Deep bedded in our hearts, of which we reck But little, till the shafts of heaven have pierced Its fragile dwelling."

The three leading characteristics, then, of the poetry of Mrs. Hemans, in general terms, are her pure religious enthusiasm; the discipline which made her an accomplished writer (in her own department); and the spirit of vivid reality which her own experience of what she wrote upon, imparted to her style. These remarks, of course, do not equally apply to all her compositions; but in proportion as she so selected her subjects, and so treated them, as to give a natural scope for the application of these qualifications, in that proportion she will be found to have succeeded-as that term is popularly understood, at least in the greatest perfec

tion.

Her youthful productions, as might be expected, including, not only her first volunie, but a considerable part of those of some maturer years,-most of which have been formerly re-published (or first published) in this country, under the title of "Earlier Poems"-are least characterized by the peculiarities we refer to. They exhibit enthusiasm, which was constitutional with her; but it is rather the enthusiasm of youthful genius, than of mature principle. The imagination breaks out, also, more unrestrained than afterwards; whether by the taste which study and practice refine, or the chastening experience of external life. Great improvement in all respects, indeed, is observable, as the result of an enlightened and energetic effort to improve; one of the circumstances in Mrs. Hemans' career, as we have noticed it already under another form, most worthy of attention and of praise. In later days, also, she had come to know better what she was fitted to do best. Self-study taught her as much what to endeavour to