Her pious and excellent mother died on the 11th of January, 1827, and soon after Mrs. Hemans removed to Wavertree, near Liverpool. Writing to a friend concerning the sorrows and conflicts of this period, she exclaims: “Oh, that I could lift up my heart, and sustain it at that height where alone the calm sunshine is!” Yet there were many alleviating circumstances connected with this migration. She was returning to the great seaport in which she was born, whose streets she had occasionally trodden, whose spires she had often seen, and which the inhabitants of Denbighshire and Flintshire had taught her to regard as a North Welsh metropolis. But the leaving of Wales was a great trial, and greatly augmented by the affectionate regrets and enthusiastic blessings of the Welsh peasants, who kissed the very gate-hinges through which she had passed. In her first letter from Wavertree to St. Asaph, she writes: “Oh, that Tuesday morning! I literally covered my face all the way from Bronwylfa, until the boys told me we had passed the Clwyd range of hills. Then something of the bitterness was over.” For the first time in her life she now took upon herself the sole responsibility of household management, became liable to the harassing cares of practical life, and subject to the formal restraints belonging to a great commercial town and its suburbs. In exchanging the ranges of the great hills, for long rows of houses—the blue seas and fresh breezes, for dirty wharves and dingy warehouses—familiar and loving faces, for the rude stare of strangers, and the simper of affected courtesy—her feelings experienced a series of shocks; and she held back from the gay world, and sought social pleasure in the company of a few chosen friends.