But at once, out broke the strange creature with a different look and tone--"And we have now got another writer-lady down at Ambleside." "A poet?" "Nay, nothing of the sort; another guess sort of person, I can tell you." "Why, who is that?" "Who is that? Why Miss Martineau they call her. They tell me she wrote up the Reform Bill for Lord Brougham; and that she's come from the Lambtons here; and that she's writing now about the taxes. Can she stop the steam, eh? can she, think you? Nay, nay, I warrant, big and strong as she is. Ha! ha! good lauk! as I met her the other day walking along the muddy road below here--'Is it a woman, or a man, or what sort of an animal is it?' said I to myself. There she came stride, stride,--great heavy shoes,--stout leather leggins on, and a knapsack on her back! Ha! ha! that's a _political comicalist_, they say. What's that? Do they mean that she can stop steam? But I said to my husband--goodness! but that _would_ have been a wife for you. Why she'd ha' ploughed! and they say she mows her own grass, and digs her own cabbage and potatoes! Ha! ha! well, we see some queer 'uns here. Wordsworth should write a poem on her. What was Peter Bell to a comicalist?" The good woman laughed outrageously at the images she had raised in her own mind, and infected by her mirth, as I had been by her melancholy, I bade her good-by. Her husband, a quiet man, sat all this time, and spite of all our talk, never for one moment looked up from his newspaper, nor uttered a syllable. Possibly he might be deaf; otherwise he was as impassive as an old Indian. The warnings of failing health, which often operate insensibly on the mind, seemed now to draw Mrs. Hemans toward the society of her younger brother and his amiable wife, who were then settled in Ireland, and were living at the Hermitage near Kilkenny, where Colonel Browne was acting as a stipendiary magistrate. Here she joined them, and from this point visited Woodstock near Thomas-town, the residence of Mrs. Tighe, and where she is buried. At these places we must not linger. Her brother removed to Dublin, as Commissioner of Police, and she went there also. It was in 1831 that she took up her abode in Dublin. She first resided in Upper Pembroke-street; then removed to 36, Stephen's-green, and finally to 20, Dawson-street, still within a hundred yards of Stephen's-green or so.