Page:On the Character of Mrs. Hemans's Writings.pdf/9

432 literature. But never can success repay its cost. The work appears—it lives in the light of popular applause; but truly might the writer exclaim— It is my youth—it is my bloom—it is my glad free heart I cast away for thee—for thee—ill fated as thou art." If this be true even of one sex, how much more true of the other. Ah! Fame to a woman is indeed but a royal mourning in purple for happiness.

.—I have alluded to Miss Jewsbury (Mrs. Fletcher), and cannot resist a brief recollection of one who was equally amiable and accomplished. I never met with any woman who possessed her powers of conversation. If her language had a fault, it was its extreme perfection. It was like reading an eloquent book—full of thought and poetry. She died too soon; and what noble aspirings, what generous enthusiasm, what kindly emotions went down to the grave with her unfulfilled destiny. There is no word that will so thoroughly describe her as "high-minded;" she was such in every sense of the word. There was no envy, no bitterness about her; and it must be a lofty nature that delights in admiration. Greatly impressed as I was with her powers, it surprised me to note how much she desponded over them. "Day by day, Gliding, like some dark mournful stream away, My silent youth flows from me." Alas! it was the shadow of the early grave that rested upon her. Her letters were very brilliant, and I believe her correspondence was extensive; what a pity that they should not be collected. Speaking of Wordsworth she said, "There is about him a grand and noble plainness, a dignified simplicity—a something of high ideal Paganism, that I never saw in any one else. He is not so much a rock covered with flowers, as a rock crowned with a castle. He is a dweller on the heights—he would have made a friend for Phocion. He reminds me of the Druidical oaks, strong and sacred." Again, while discussing the intercourse of society,—"You consider society something like a honeycomb—sweet, but hollow; so do I. But you seemed also to consider it expedient for every one by right or courtesy termed 'distinguished' to play truant—laying aside all habits of thought or feeling by which such distinction had been acquired. As if the earnestness of genius were less endurable than the heartlessness of the world; nay, as if the polished chain-mail of the latter were the only garb fit to be worn by the former. Personally speaking, I should be sorry to go into public with any other disposition than one anxious to give and willing to receive pleasure. Very high or very deep conversation, anything like communion of heart, would be out of place; but I do not see that we are called upon to pay so costly a compliment to society, as to assume a character diametrically opposed to our real world; to utter sentiments we secretly disbelieve—to be as angry with our better nature for their bursting from restraint, as at other times with our inferior nature for refusing submission. I think that wisdom may wear 'motley,' and truth, unlike man, be born laughing; and that until we go into society thus determined to seek for more than mere amusement in pleasure, we must not be surprised to find ourselves