Mrs. Hemans had three of her boys with her at Dove's Nest, and they enjoyed the place to perfection. It was just the place for boys to be turned loose in; and with fishing, sketching, and climbing the hill above the Nest, they were in elysium. Her own health, however, was so far undermined now, that she complains in her letter she can not follow them as she would, but that she is more a child in heart than any of them. Her own description of the Dove's Nest is this: "The house was originally meant for a small villa, though it has long passed into the hands of farmers; and there is in consequence an air of neglect about the little demesne, which does not at all approach desolation, and yet gives it something of attractive interest. You see everywhere traces of love and care beginning to be effaced; rose-trees spread into wildness; laurels darkening the windows with too luxuriant branches; and I can not help saying to myself, 'Perhaps some heart like my own in its feelings and suffering, has here sought refuge and repose.' The ground is laid out in rather an antiquated style, which, now that nature is beginning to reclaim it from art, I do not at all dislike. There is a little grassy terrace immediately under the window, descending to a small court with a circular grass plat, on which grows one tall white rose-tree. You can not imagine how I delight in that fair, solitary, neglected-looking tree. I am writing to you from an old-fashioned alcove in the little garden, round which the sweet-brier and moss-rose trees have completely run wild; and I look down from it upon lovely Windermere, which seems at this moment even like another sky, so truly is our summer cloud and tint of azure pictured in its transparent mirror."