first attracted to the literature and chivalry of Spain by the circumstance of a near relation being engaged in the Peninsular war. She shrunk with more than ordinary feminine timidity from bodily pain, refusing even to have her ears pierced for rings, and yet delighted in records of martial glory. One of her favorite ornaments was the Cross of the Legion of Honor, taken on some Spanish battle-field. Campbell's Odes were her delight; the lines, especially, Now joy, old England! rise In the triumph of thy might! Yet she had little taste for mere pageantry.—An unkind review to which her earliest poems gave occasion so preyed upon her mind as to confine her for several days to bed.—During the latter part of her life a gentleman called upon her and thanked her with great earnestness for the serious benefit he had derived from “the Sceptic,” which he stated to have been instrumental in rescuing him from gross infidelity.—The first noted literary character with whom she became intimately acquainted, was Bishop Heber, to whom she was introduced in her twenty-fifth year. She confided her literary plans to him, and always spoke of him with affection. It was at his instigation she first attempted dramatic composition. He was her adviser in the “Vespers of Palermo.” This play was brought forward at Covent Garden in December 1823, the principal characters being taken by Young, Charles Kemble, Yates, Mrs. Bartley, and Miss Kelly. It was not well received, but the authoress bore her disappointment cheerfully. The drama was afterwards produced with much greater success in Edinburgh. Sir Walter Scott wrote an epilogue for it, and from this circumstance arose the subsequent acquaintance between the “Great Unknown” and Mrs. H——. Of Kean, she said that “seeing him act was like reading Shakspeare by flashes of lightning.”—She possessed a fine feeling for music as well as for drawing.—Of the “Trials of Margaret Lindsay” she thus expresses a just critical opinion: “The book is certainly full of deep feeling and beautiful language, but there are many passages which, I think, would have been better omitted; and although I can bear as much fictitious woe as other people, I really began to feel it an infliction at last.”—She compliments Captain Basil Hall's “temperate style of writing.”—Speaking of the short descriptive _recitative_ which so frequently introduces a lyrical burst of feeling in the minor pieces of our poetess, Mr. Chorley observes: “This form of composition became so especially popular in America, that hardly a poet has arisen since the influence of Mrs. Hemans' genius made itself felt on the other side of the Atlantic, who has not attempted something of a similar subject and construction.”—Among the last strangers who visited her in her illness, were a Jewish gentleman and lady, who entreated admittance to “the author of the ‘Hebrew Mother.’”—“There