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xxvi

We cannot part from this view of our subject without again adverting to the enthusiastic interest which Professor Norton has taken in the dissemination of the writings of Mrs Hemans among his countrymen. Both in her conversation and in her letters, she was eloquent in her expressions of gratitude towards him in this respect; and all her admirers are bound to respect that gentleman, for the disinterested endeavours he so successfully made, not only in rendering her genius more extensively known; but, probably, for having been the means of exciting her to exertions, which might have otherwise been damped by limited success, or altogether frustrated by critical hostility. That Felicia Hemans would have been a poetess, whether contemporary criticism had allowed the fact or not, admits not of dispute; but still we know not how far, in many respects, even the most gifted and intellectual are the children of circumstances. Many a flower of genius, which would have expanded under