There are absolutely no other facts given of her domestic circumstances in the various memoirs of her by her own sister, by Mr. Henry Chorley and Mrs. Lawrence, published soon after her death, except the remarkable statement that Captain Hemans went away for change to Italy, and there remained for seventeen years, which certainly seems a very long time. We are, however, told that he occasionally wrote when necessity arose. After her mother's death Felicia Hemans offered to go out to join her husband, but to this he would not consent, and she then set to work to make a life for herself at home, to educate her children, and to go on writing poetry, to add the useful prose of pounds and shillings to her limited means. She wrote for her children's sake; she wrote for her own art's sake too. Some of her poems have become passwords in the land. Who does not still know Casabianca' and 'The Better Land'?

Among Mrs. Hemans's friends were Wordsworth and Walter Scott, who were fond of her. Her women friends were numerous and very enthusiastic. One of them, a well-known authoress, Miss Jewsbury, writes of her: 'I might describe her for ever, and never should I succeed in portraying Egeria! She was a Muse, a Grace, a variable child, a dependent woman, the Italy of human beings.'

I have advisedly called my little Paper Felicia Felix,' for, though her music was sad, the musician was sweet and full of charming harmonies; it was something no doubt of her own lament that she poured out in profuse strains of most natural and unpremeditated art. In Annuals and Forget-me-nots, in Poets' Corners, she uttered her song and relieved her heart. She was not old even when she died; and she must have enjoyed singing and pouring forth to the last. Her pretty name, her charming countenance, her luxuriant curls and old-patterned graces, perhaps still add to the interest which belongs to her personality. The men and women of England. and America were delighted with her, everyone-but one person. Indeed, I have read an article in a magazine of that day in which she is compared to Desdemona, though Desdemona, as we know, only sang her songs, and they were not published till after her death.

To return to Mrs. Hemans, we learn that editors wrote by every post for contributions from her pen, and admirers trod on each other's heels, and packets of poetry arrived by every mail; also there came messages and compliments from America, where,

if she would have consented to settle down, Felicia was offered a definite competence by a publishing firm. There is a story of a chair in which she once sat kept sacred and apart in a gentleman's library and shown to admiring visitors.

The poetess has herself described some of her own following of plaguing admirers,' 'teasing adorers,' &c. &c. Her spirits would rise on occasion, and she enjoyed the moment to the full; but all the same it is very plain that the poor soul was often sad at heart, and that a bright hearthstone would have been much more to her taste than the pedestal which she had to put up with.

All this was happening in the glorious days of innocent enthusiasm, in the days of Miss Mitford and Mme. de Staël, following upon the mysterious triumphs of Hannah More. Ladies held their own then, not by main force, but by divinest right. Corinnes were plentiful, and Edgermonds still more plentiful. Myself,' Felicia Felix once wrote on the margin of the book in which she had been reading one of Corinne's passionate outbursts. And so, though she wept, she must have also wiped away her tears, which brought her interest and friends and occupation, and which helped to educate her boys, whose loyal affection and admiration is pretty to read of still.

Mrs. Hemans is somewhat too poetical for my taste,' said Sir Walter in 1823-'too many flowers and too little fruit; but that may be the cynical criticism of an elderly gentleman, for it is certain that when I was young I read verses with infinitely more indulgence, because with more pleasure than I can now.' Sir Walter Scott's criticisms were addressed to another friendly poetess, Joanna Baillie.

Mrs. Hemans once wrote a play about the Sicilian Vespers which fell very flat in London, to the bitter disappointment of her school boys. It was subsequently brought out by the Siddonses in Edinburgh, and with success, greatly owing to Sir Walter's kind auspices. I trust the piece will succeed,' he wrote to Miss Baillie again in 1824, but there is no promising, for Saunders is meanly jealous of being thought less critical than John Bull, and may perhaps despise to be pleased with what was less fortunate in London. I wish Mrs. Hemans had been on the spot to make any alterations, which the players are always demanding. I will read the drama over more carefully than I have yet done, and tell you if anything occurs. The enclosed line will show that the Siddonses are agreeable to act Mrs. Hemans's drama. When you tell the

tale say nothing about me, for on no earthly consideration would I like it to be known that I interfered in theatrical matters; it brings such a torrent of applications which it is impossible to grant and often very painful to refuse. Everybody thinks they can write blank verse, and “a word of yours to Mrs. Siddons," &c. &c. I have great pleasure, however, in serving Mrs. Hemans, both on account of her own merit and your patronage.'

Most old letters that are worth keeping at all speak for themselves, and it is not only by what is in them but by what is left out of them that they speak, and tell us something of the people who wrote and of the spirit in which they wrote. The writer has been set thinking of Mrs. Hemans by a correspondence which came into her hands the other day through the kindness of Mr. Alfred Graves, who, at his uncle's death, found some letters which had passed between Mrs. Hemans and Dr. Robert Graves, her faithful friend and admirer. In this correspondence one meets with two interesting personalities-and yet it all reads more like the echo of a story rather than the story itself; though the manuscript lies there in the delicate even handwriting in which Dr. Graves has copied out the extracts. Most of them were afterwards published in Mr. Chorley's Life of Mrs. Hemans. The letters were edited by Dr. Graves, perhaps almost too scrupulously for our modern taste, which is interested in definite impressions and vivid details rather than in topographical generalities.

Felicia was a saddened woman, wistful, expecting more from life than life itself had to give, and looking to Nature for sympathy in her troubles. Dr. Graves was a very young man ; for him too Nature was beautiful, only life was happy-the waters laughed, the skies were blue and laughed. He had just completed his college career, he was entering Holy Orders. Mrs. Hemans must have been about seven and thirty at this time, when he became tutor to her youngest son.

In all the correspondence between our poetess and her kind unchanging friend, the descriptions of scenery, the remarks upon life and literature, form the chief staple; there is little that is personal, and yet the trust and response between them will be felt and realised and reach us still. 'I was happy among you all,' she writes, or words to that effect; I found response for my heart and food for my mind as well.'

People certainly look upon poetry from very different points of view; one reads in this very correspondence of a religious

minded Irish mother standing by her daughter's deathbed and exclaiming passionately, Oh! my child, my child, the pride of literature has destroyed you!... The poor dying daughter had published some successful verses!

The latter five or six years of her life were spent by Mrs. Hemans in Ireland, where one of her brothers was then living, and where the Graves family, all kind good friends, were ready to welcome her, this one member being specially devoted to her.

There was certainly a great deal of friendship going in those days; people led more monotonous lives than they do now. Sentiment was more continuous, and much more a recognised condition of things than at present, when passions and money are our somewhat stagey ideals, and feeling itself has become a sort of Dumb Crambo.

When Dr. Robert Graves was eighty-five years old the centenary of Felicia Hemans' birth came round in the natural course of time, and his nephew has told me how the old friend, lying on his sick bed, rallied to dictate one last poem, one last greeting to the memory of the beautiful woman who had been his Egeria, and whom all his life long he had admired and loved.

Tresses of sunny auburn fell in ringlets

And harmonized with thy soft hazel eyes.

Thy height perfection, and thy springing motion
Was as an Oread nymph's.

Everything was coming to an end, but the past was untouched, and its romantic friendship. It is like gazing at a beautiful prospect in Nature, to hear of a charming and faithful sentiment. which time has not destroyed in its remorseless course.

One contemporary of Felicia's was L. E. L., who must have also loved her, for when Mrs. Hemans died L. E. L. wrote a farewell poem which speaks true feeling:

O weary one! since thou art laid

Within thy mother's breast,
The green, the quiet mother Earth,
Thrice blessed be thy rest.
Thy heart is left within our hearts,
Altho' life's pang is o'er,

But the quick tears are in my eyes,
And I can write no more.

THE MILITARY LESSONS OF THE WAR.

A REJOINDER.

SOME months ago the Editor of CORNHILL was good enough to insert as a separate article the concluding chapter of my 'Great Boer War' which dealt with the lessons which might be learned from that great experience and sketched out a method by which, it seemed to me, the military forces of this country might be made more formidable without an increase of expense. Since then my remarks have been subjected to a good deal of criticism, notably by Colonel Maude in the CORNHILL for December, by Mr. J. W. Fortescue in Macmillan' for November, and by Colonel Lonsdale Hale in the Times.' I should be glad to have the opportunity of dealing with one or two of the more important points which have been raised in this discussion.

And first of all allow me to say that I do not wish to approach this all-important subject in the petty spirit of a debating society. I have formed certain views upon certain facts, but I am prepared in an instant to modify them or to reverse them if I can persuade myself that I am mistaken. I do not wish to uphold a thesis for the pleasure of argument, nor do I desire to score points off any opponent. The matter is too grave for that. Discussion is always good, and if my views are unsound then even their refutation may help to clear up the question. In this spirit I have read carefully all that my critics have said, and now I find that, though I would soften down certain crudities in expression, and possibly modify some figures in my original article, there is not one of the propositions there which has been seriously shaken.

Both Colonel Maude and Mr. Fortescue come back with persistence to the theory that military affairs should be left to military men and that civilian comments are of the nature of impertinence. What would Dr. Conan Doyle say if officers lectured him upon medicine?' asks Colonel Maude, and the question at first seems a just one. 'These things should be left to the professional soldiers,' says Mr. Fortescue, and the comment might appear reasonable. Let us, however, examine the matter a little more closely.

Is the science of war really an abstruse and highly specialised branch of learning like the science of medicine, or is it a matter