The first six years of her life, were passed in wealth and ease, but at the close of the century, in consequence of commercial difficulties, her father broke up his establishment at Liverpool, and removed to the sea-coast of Denbighshire, in North Wales, near the little town of Abergele, and shortly afterwards emigrated to America, where he died. The education of Felicia Browne thus devolved exclusively on her mother; and under her judicious instruction, she learned with facility the elements of general knowledge—evinced peculiar aptness for the acquisition of languages, drawing, and music—and derived information with extraordinary ease, quickness, and clearness, from all things visible, audible, and tangible. The air at Gwrych is salubrious, and the scenery around beautiful; and often in after-years did the gifted poetess recall those happy hours spent by the sea-shore, listening to the cadence of the waves; or passed in the old house, gazing across the intervening meadows on a range of magnificent mountains; or consumed in the vale of Clwyd, searching for primroses. Mountains, the sea, and London, have been pronounced important points in education. Felicia Browne had long enjoyed the first and the second, and at the age of eleven completed the mind-enlarging triad, by paying a visit to the great metropolis. But despite the attractions of music, the drama, and works of art, the contrast between the hard pavement, crowded streets, and social constraint of London, and the glory, freshness, and freedom of her mountain home, made her more anxious to get away than ever she had been to come. Soon after she appeared in print, and the harsh animadversions of reviewers probably ignorant of the years of the authoress, so distressed the sensitive aspirant as to bring on an illness. In 1809, the family left Gwrych, and went to reside at Bronwylfa, near St. Asaph, in Flintshire. Here the work of intellectual development progressed steadily; and Miss Browne, already mistress of French and Italian, acquired the Spanish and Portuguese, with the rudiments of German.