POETRY.-Wall Flowers, 209.-Slander; Victory, 216.-What is Home; Fairies' Summer Evening Song; Moral Cosmetics; Napoleon Crossing the Alps, 239. PROSPECTUS.-Tuis work is conducted in the spirit cf | now becomes every intelligent American to be informed Attell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was favor- of the condition and changes of foreign countries. And ably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is this not only because of their nearer connection with ourtwice as large, and appears so often, we not only give selves, but because the nations seem to be hastening, spirit and freshness to it by many things which were ex- through a rapid process of change, to some new state of cluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our things, which the merely political prophet cannot compute scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, or foresee. are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader. The elaborate and stately Essays of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and other Reviews; and Blackwood's noble criticisms on Poetry, his keen political Commentaries, highly wrought Tales, and vivid descriptions of rural and mountain Scenery; and the contributions to Literature, History, and Common Life, by the sagacious Spectator, the sparkling Examiner, the judicious Athenæum, the busy and industrious Literary Gazette, the sensible and comprehensive Britannia, the sober and respectable Chrislian Observer; these are intermixed with the Military and Naval reminiscences of the United Service, and with the best articles of the Dublin University, New Monthly, Fraser's, Tait's, Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Sporting Magazines, and of Chambers' admirable Journal. We do not consider it beneath our dignity to borrow wit and wisdom from Punch; and, when we think it good enough, make use of the thunder of The Times. We shall increase our variety by importations from the continent of Europe, and from the new growth of the British colonies. The steamship has brought Europe, Asia, and Africa, into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our connections, as Merchants, Travellers, and Politicians, with all parts of the world; so that much more than ever it Geographical Discoveries, the progress of Colonization, (which is extending over the whole world,) and Voyages and Travels, will be favorite matter for our selections; and, in general, we shall systematically and very ullv acquaint our readers with the great department of Foreign affairs, without entirely neglecting our own. While we aspire to make the Living Age desirable to all who wish to keep themselves informed of the rapid progress of the movement-to Statesmen, Divines, Lawyers, and Physicians-to men of business and men of leisure-it is still a stronger object to make it attractive and useful to their Wives and Children. We believe that we can thus do some good in our day and generation; and hope to make the work indispensable in every well-informed family. We say indispensable, because in this day of cheap literature it is not possible to guard against the influx of what is bad in taste and vicious in morals, in any other way than by furnishing a sufficient supply of a healthy character. The mental and moral appetite must be gratified. We hope that, by "winnowing the wheat from the chaff," by providing abundantly for the imagination, and by a large collection of Biography, Voyages and Travels, History, and more solid matter, we may produce a work which shall be popular, while at the same time it will aspire to raise the standard of public taste. Postage. When sent with the cover on, the Living Age consists of three sheets, and is rated as a pamphlet, at 4 cents. But when sent without the cover, it comes within the definition of a newspaper given in the law, and cannot legally be charged with more than newspaper postage, (14 cts.) We add the definition alluded to:-" A newspaper is "any printed publication, issued in numbers, consisting of not more than two sheets, and published at short, stated intervals of not more than one month, conveying intelligence of passing events." Monthly parts.-For such as prefer it in that form, the Living Age is put up in monthly parts, containing four or five weekly numbers. In this shape it shows to great advantage in comparison with other works, containing in each part double the matter of any of the quarterlies. But we recommend the weekly numbers, as fresher and fuller of life. Postage on the monthly parts is about 14 cents. The volumes are published quarterly, each volume containing as much matter as a quarterly review gives in eighteen months. WASHINGTON, 27 DEC., 1845. Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind in the utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS. LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 247.-10 FEBRUARY, 1849. From Blackwood's Magazine. MRS. HEMANS. FELICIA HEMANS and the poetesses of England! Such would probably be the form in which the toast would run, if literary toasts were the fashion, or such a mode of compliment the one exactly suited to the case. Not that we would venture positively to assert that Mrs. Hemans stands at the head of our poetesses, the first absolutely in point of genius-though there is but one name, that of Joanna Baillie, which occurs to us, at the moment, as disputing with hers that preeminence -but because she, in a more complete manner than any other of our poetesses, represents the mind, the culture, the feelings, and character, of the English gentlewoman. Her piety, her resignation, her love of nature and of home-that cheerfulness easily moved by little incidents, that sadness into which reflection almost always settled-all speak of the cultivated woman bred under English skies, and in English homes. Her attachment to the privacy of life, her wise dislike and avoidance of the éclat of literary renown, and the dull, dry, fever-heat of fashionable circles, tend to complete her qualifications as a fitting representative of her fair countrywomen. The cultivation of her mind, in its weakness as well as elegance, savored, perhaps, too much of what we are compelled to call feminine. Alive at all times to beauty in all its forms, to music, to tender and imaginative thought, she seems to have been almost equally averse to whatever bore the aspect of an analysis of feeling, or an approach to a severe investigation of truth. Present her with the beautiful, but spare her all scientific dissection of it. Let the flower live as her companion; do not rend it to pieces to show its conformation. Let but the faith be tender and true to the heart, and disturb her not with rude inquiries whether it possess any other truth or not. That too much melancholy (at least for her own happiness) which is traceable in her poems, arose in part from events in her life, but in part, also, from this too partial and limited cultivation of the mind. The feelings were excited or refined, but the reasoning powers not enough called forth; no task-work was therefore given to the active intellect; and a mind that could not be at rest was left to brood over sentiments, either the sad heritage of all mortality, or the peculiar offspring of afflictions of her own. We are not imputing, in this remark, any shadow of blame to her; we make the remark because we think that, eminent as she was, she still suffered much from the unwise and arbitrary distinction which is made in the education of the two sexes. The difference between the mental qualities of the sexes is owing, we apprehend, far more to education than to nature. At all events, there is no such natural difference as warrants the distinction we make in the mental discipline we provide for them. There are certain professional studies with which no one thinks of vexing the mind of any one, man or woman, but those who intend to practise the professions; but why, in a good English library, there should be one half of it, and that the better half, which a young woman is not expected to read-this we never could understand, and never reflect on with common patience. Why may not a Locke, or a Paley, or a Dugald Stewart, train the mind of the future mother of a family? or why may not an intelligent young woman be a companion for her brother or her husband in his more serious moods of thought, as well as in his gayer and more trifling? Would the world lose anything of social happiness or moral refinement by this intellectual equality of the two sexes? You vex the memory of a young girl with dictionaries and vocabularies without end; you tax her memory in every conceivable manner; and at an after-age you give the literature of sentiment freely to her pillage; but that which should step between the two-the culture of the reason-this is entirely forbidden. If she learns a dozen modern languages, she does not read a single book in any one of them that would make her think. Even in her religious library, the same distinction is preserved. Books of sentimental piety-some of them maudlin enough-are thrust with kindest anxiety and most liberal profusion upon her; any work of theology, any work that discusses and examines, is as carefully excluded. We are not contending that there is no difference whatever in the mental constitution of the two sexes. There may be less tendency to ratiocination in woman; there is certainly more of feeling, a quicker and more sensitive nature. One sees this especially in children. Mark them in their play-hours, in their holiday freedom, when they are left to themselves to find matter of enjoyment how much more pleasure does the girl evidently derive from any beautiful or living thing that comes before it than the boy! We have an instance of it almost as we write. There is a group of children on the beach. The little girl is in perfect ecstasies, as she looks at the sparkling waves that come bounding to her feet; she shouts, she leaps, she herself bounds towards them, then springs back as they approach, half frightened and half pleased she knows not how to express her delight at this great playfellow she has found. Meanwhile the boy, her brother, does nothing but throw stones at it-of that he seems never wearied. The beach is a perfect armory to him, and he pelts the graceful controversy, or use big words-in short, to deal with printer's ink without soiling the most delicate fingers. As to that argument drawn from the supposed neglect of domestic duties-which it seems, in those days just emerging from barbarity, was still heard of-she dismisses it very briefly. waves remorselessly. What is their grace to him? | women who dance-how to comport themselves So, too, in an inland scene, a garden or a lawn, with consummate propriety; as not to enter into we have often noticed what exquisite pleasure a little girl will feel, as she watches a sparrow alight near her upon the ground, in search of crumbs or other food. Her little frame quite thrills as this other little piece of life comes hopping and pecking about her. She loads it, but with suppressed voice, with all the endearing epithets her vocabu-" Comme ces devoirs dans une maison bien ordonlary supplies. She is evidently embarrassed that née, ne peuvent jamais prendre plus d'une heure they are so few; she makes up by their frequent par jour, cette objection est absolument nulle." As repetition. She absolutely loves the little creature, there is much implied in that "maison bien orwith all whose movements she seems to have the donée," and as Madame de Genlis did not write keenest sympathy. Her brother, the boy, he has for simple gentle-folks, it is to be hoped that the nothing for it but his unfailing stone, or he flings one hour per diem may admit of extension withhis hat at it. Unfailing, fortunately, the stone is out any forfeiture of literary privileges. In her not; for, if his skill as a marksman responded to time, too, there was thought to be a sort of feud his destructive zeal, there is nothing that a stone between authors and authoresses-a thing which would kill that would be left alive, or that a stone in our day is quite inconceivable—for she writes, would break that would be left whole. A mere apropos of a charge of plagiarism, against La blind animal-activity seems, at that very interesting Fontaine, in the following indignant strain :— age, to distinguish the future lord of the creation." Quelles que soient le bonhomie et la candeur At an after period of life, when thought has d'un auteur, il sait que, par une loi tacite mais educated the youth into feeling, the picture is often universelle, il est toujours dispensé de convenir entirely reversed. Then, unless the man be bred qu'il doit à une femme une idée heureuse. Dans up a mere pleasure-hunter, seeking what he calls ce cas seulement le plagiat et le silence sont amusement in town or country, the superior educa- également légitimes." tion he has received makes him the more feeling, the more imaginative, because the more reflective of the two. That brother who once shocked his little sister by his stupid and cruel amusements, now looks with something like contempt at the frivolous tastes and occupations-at the system of poor artificial enjoyments-to which that sister has betaken herself. Now, if they are at the sea-side together, it is he who finds companionship in the waves, who finds thought grow more expanded, freer and bolder, in the presence of the boundless ocean. She, too, dotes upon the sea, and sits down beside it-to read her novel. Now, if they ride or walk through the country together, it is his eye that sees the bird upon the bough-hers is on the distant dust that some equipage is making. We have changed all that; we have had too many instances of women of talent and of genius, to doubt their ability to excel-we make no exception We give in any branch of literature whatever. them, on the other hand, no monopoly of elegance or grace, or delicacy of touch, as some affect to do. These qualities they are very likely to display ; but they will be superior in them to authors of the male sex, only just so far as they are superior to those authors in genius and talent. There is still a practice in many critics to detect the style feminine from the style masculine. The sooner this is laid aside the better. There are styles which, speaking metaphorically, one may say have a feminine grace, or a feminine weakness. Such an observation has been made, by Sir James Mackintosh, on the style of Addison. But to pretend to say of a given page of composition whether a man or a woman has penned it, is absurd. We often hear it said, that none but a woman could have written the letters of Madame de Sévigné. If But matters are mending, and will continue to mend. There are so many women of richly cultivated minds who have distinguished themselves in letters or in society, and made it highly feminine to be intelligent as well as good, and to have elevated as well as amiable feelings, that by-and-Cowper had been a woman, people would have by the whole sex must adopt a new standard of education. It must, we presume, be by leaders of their own starting out of their own body, that the rest of the soft and timid flock must be led. said the same thing of his letters. They are unrivalled, at least in our own language, for grace and elegance, and wit and playfulness. No woman, we believe-and the epistolary style is supYes, we are mending. Very different are our posed to belong by especial right to the female pen times from those when Madame de Genlis pub--has ever written such charming letters as those lished her little work, De l'Influence des Femmes to Lady Hesketh, and his old friend Thomas sur la Littérature Française comme Prolectrices des Hill. As to the letters of Madame de Sévigné, Lettres, et comme Auteurs. She had to contend, they so evidently come from a mother to a daughwith the same acrid energy, for the privilege of a ter, that it is impossible to forget for a moment the lady to write, as a Turkish dame of the present sex of the writer. But if the qualities which have century might be supposed to display, who should given them literary celebrity are to be pronounced contend for the privilege of walking abroad un- feminine, half the literature of France is of the veiled, or, rather, unmuffled. And even she her- same gender. Still less can we tolerate the affecself thinks it necessary to give certain rules to tation that pretends to discern a certain weakness, young women who write-as she would to young! a tremulousness of the hand when the pen is man. held by a woman. There is grace and elegance, | region, with ample range through the treasures but, forsooth, a certain hesitation-a want of of an extensive library, the young poetess passed a vigor and certainty of touch. Nonsense. Take happy childhood, to which she would often fondly Our Village, by Miss Mitford, and the Sketch- revert amidst the vicissitudes of her after-life. Book, by Washington Irving; they are both Here she imbibed that intense love of nature which of the graceful and elegant order of style; but ever afterwards haunted her like a passion,' and the lady writes the English language with far that warm attachment for the green land of more freedom, ease, and vigor, than the gentle- Wales,' its affectionate, true-hearted people; their The poetic element is mingled in her dic-traditions, their music, and all their interesting tion with far more taste and judgment. It glitters characteristics-which she cherished to the last through her prose as the sunlight in the green hours of her existence." A pleasant picture this tree-throwing its gold amongst the foliage, yet the large old house near the sea, and amongst leaving it the same green, and simple, and refresh-mountains, with Welsh harpers and Welsh traing object as before. ditions, and great store of books, and the little girl ranging at will through all. This, and the picture we have of the young student conning her Shakspeare, her choicest recreation, "in a secret haunt of her own-a seat amongst the branches of an old apple-tree-where she revelled in the treasures of this cherished volume"-are all we learn of her childhood, and all perhaps that remained to tell. No--we will grant to woman no monopoly in the lighter elegancies, and presume nothing against her ability to excel in the graver qualities of authorship. We have said that Mrs. Hemans was peculiarly the poetess of her country women, but we do not mean to imply by this that her style is peculiarly feminine-for we do not pretend to know what a feminine style is; we thus charac- Our poetess was very soon in print. Few have terized her because the sentiments she habitually commenced their life of authorship so early. In expresses are those which will almost universally 1808, some friends, "perhaps more partial than find a response in the minds of her country women. judicious," published a collection of her poems, It seems an ungracious thing to say, but we do written at and before the age of fourteen, in a wish that the biographical notice of Mrs. Hemans, quarto volume. "Its appearance," our fair biogappended to the last edition of her works, had not rapher tells us, "drew down the animadversions been written by a sister. So near a relative may of some self-constituted arbiter of taste." We be presumed, indeed, to know more of the person never heard of any critics being constituted by whose life she undertakes to narrate than any one royal patent, or any mode of popular election— else; but she may not know what to tell us. Her certainly not by a committee of authors. Self-convery familiarity with the subject is against her stituted! why did not the lady call him a self-conshe cannot place it at a distance from her, and re- ceited knave, while she was about it? Just or gard it with a freshness of view; she does not unjust, there would have been some meaning in the think of recording, she does not even remember, phrase, at least. We suspect, for our part, that what to her has none of the interest of novelty. these friends, “ more partial than judicious," who A sister who should give to any impartial biog-published the rhymes of a young girl of fourteen rapher the materials he required of her, would be in a quarto volume, were themselves strangely found to contribute far more to our knowledge constituted arbiters of taste. of the person whose life was written, than by holding the pen herself. Besides, a sister can have none, and show none, but sisterly feelings; and though these are very proper and amiable, we want something more. 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 The two or three events which we learn from to fade so early. The mantling bloom of her this biographical notice, and which bear upon the cheeks was shaded by a profusion of natural ringeducation of the poetess, are soon recorded, and lets of a rich golden brown; and the ever-varying they are the only class of events we feel particu- expression of her brilliant eyes gave a changeful larly interested in. Felicia Dorothea Browne-play to her countenance, which would have made such was the maiden name of Mrs. Hemans-was it impossible for any painter to do justice to it." born at Liverpool, 25th September, 1793. She No wonder that so fair a being should excite the is described as distinguished "almost from her admiration of a gallant captain. And the love on cradle by extreme beauty and precocious talents." both sides was ardent and sincere; it supported When of the age of seven years, her father, who the absence of three years; for Captain Hemans, had been a merchant of considerable opulence, met soon after their introduction, was called upon to with a reverse of fortune, and the family retired to embark with his regiment for Spain. On his reWales, "where for the next nine years they re- turn, in 1812, they were married. Of their dosided at Gwrych, near Abergele, in Denbighshire, mestic happiness, or unhappiness, nothing is said; a large old mansion, close to the sea, and shut in but six years after, in 1818, we are simply told by a picturesque range of mountains". -a change that the captain went to Rome-and never recf residence which was, at all events, highly pro- | turned. The separated pair never met again. pitious for the development of the poetic char- "To dwell on this subject,' says her biogra"would be unnecessarily painful; yet it acter. "In the calm seclusion of this romantic pher, 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 sympathize with ?-was there too much of poetry mingled with the daily food of life? It may be that the breath of spring, The tune that speaks of other times- The sound of waves by night; Yet scorn thou not, for this, the true If there be one that o'er the dead But for those bonds all perfect made, Never to mortals given Oh! lay thy lonely dreams aside, Or lift them unto heaven. We follow no further the events of her biogra 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 admi-phy. We have here all that reflects a light upon ration she once had given was withdrawn? Or the poems themselves. That Welsh life among should we say of her, in lines of her own :the mountains-the little girl with her Shakspeare in the apple-tree-that beauty of fifteen, There are hearts So perilously fashioned, that for them full of poetry and enthusiasm and love-marriage God's touch alone hath gentleness enough -disappointment—and the living afterwards, with To waken, and not break, their thrilling strings. her children round her, in a condition worse than Of this, perhaps, some future biographer may tell widowhood;-here is all the comment that her us. There are many passages in her poetry which biography affords on her sweet and melancholy show an 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 diff cult 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 Few are the hearts whence one same touch Such ties would make this life of ours It may be that thy brother's eye verse. How redolent of nature is her poetry! how true And how vividly the verse reflects the life! 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 It is singular how, without the least apparent truth of her rapid and unpretending descriptions. effort, all the persons she brings before us are immediately localized 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 The household porch around, With sweet laughter in their sound. |