[In spite, however, of the unromantic exterior of her new abode, the earlier part of Mrs. Hemans’s residence at Rhyllon may, perhaps, be considered as the happiest of her life; as far, at least, as the term happiness could ever be fitly applied to any period of it later than childhood. The house, with all its ugliness, was large and convenient, the view from its windows beautiful and extensive, and its situation, on a fine green slope, terminating in a pretty woodland dingle, peculiarly healthy and cheerful. Never, perhaps, had she more thorough enjoyment of her boys than in witnessing, and often joining in, their sports in those pleasant breezy fields, where the kites soared so triumphantly, and the hoops trundled so merrily, and where the cowslips grew as cowslips had never grown before. An atmosphere of home soon gathered round the dwelling; roses were planted and honeysuckles trained, and the rustling of the solitary poplar near her window was taken to her heart like the voice of a friend. The dingle became a favourite haunt, where she would pass many dreamlike hours of enjoyment with her books, and her own sweet fancies, and her children playing around her. Every tree and flower, and tuft of moss that sprang amidst its green recesses, was invested with some individual charm by that rich imagination, so skilled in
“Clothing the palpable and the familiar
With golden exhalations of the dawn.”
Here, on what the boys would call ‘mamma’s sofa’–a little grassy mound under her favourite beech-tree–she first read The Talisman, and has described the scene with a loving minuteness in her Hour of Romance:–
“There were thick leaves above me and around,
And low sweet sighs, like those of childhood’s sleep,
Amidst their dimness, and a fitful sound
As of soft showers on water. Dark and deep
Lay the oak shadows o’er the turf–so still
They seem’d but pictured glooms; a hidden rill
Made music–such as haunts us in a dream–
Under the fern-tufts; and a tender gleam
