The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-07-07 00:00:00

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE FOR JULY.

The present number opens with an admirable article
on conservative associations, which is replete with excel-
lent advice, stiff facts, and sound reasoning, and which
we earnestly recommend to the perusal of every man
who takes an interest in the fate of the British empire.
The second article on Public Education in France tells
also some wholesome truths. Upon the whole the num-
ber is unusually lively and amusing, besides being in-
structive. We select the following, however, not because
it is the shortest, but because it relates to a lamented
lady who was a frequent contributor to Blackwood, and
one of the most elegant of the poets of our own

imes

SABBATH SONNET.

COMPOSED BY MRS. HEMANS A FEW DAYS BEFORE HER
DEATH, AND DEDICATRD TO HER BROTHER.

How many blessed groups this hour are bending
Through England's primrose meadow paths their way
Toward spire and tower, 'midst shadowy elms ascending,
Whence the sweet chimes proclaim the hallowed day.
The halls from old heroic ages grey
Pour their fair children forth; and hamlets low,
Wi:h whose thick orchard-blooms the soft winds play,
Send out their inmates in a happy flow,
Like a freed vernal stream. I may not tread
With them those pathways,—to the feverish bed
Of sickness bound;—yet, oh my God ! I bless
Thy mercy, that with Sabbath peace hath filled
11Iy chastened heart, and all its throbbings stilled
To one deep calm of lowliest thankfulness.

We cannot allow these verses to adorn, with a sad beauty,
the pages of this magazine—more especially as they are the
last composed by their distinguished writer, and that only a few
days before her death—without at least a passing tribute of
regret over an event which has cast a shadow of gloom over the
sunshiny fields of cotemporary literature. But two months ago,
the beautiful lyric, entitled Despondency and Aspiration, ap-
peared in these pages, and now the sweet fountain of music
from which that prophetic strain gushed has ceased to flow.
The highly-gifted and accomplished, the patient, the meek,and
long-suffering Felicia Hemans is no mole. She died on the
night of Saturday, the 16th May, at Dublin, and met her fate
wtih all the calm resignation of a christian, conscious that her
spirit was winging its flight to another and a better world,
where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at
rest."

Without disparagement of the living, we scarcely hesitate to
say, that in Mrs. Hemans our female literature has Lust perhaps
its brightest ornament. To Juana Baillie she might be inferior
not only in vigour of conception, but in the power of metaphy-
sically analyzing those sentiments and feelings, which consti-
tute the bases of human action; to Mrs. Jameson in that cri-
tical perception which, from detached fragments of spoken
thought, can diserimim.te the links ehich bind all into a dis-
tinctive character;—to Miss Landon in eloquent facility;—to
Caroline Bowles in similar pathos;—and to Mary Mitford in
power of thought;---but as a female writer, influencing the
female mind, she has undoubtedly stood, for some by-past
years, the very first in the first rank; and this pre-eminence
has been acknowledged, not only in her own land, but wherever
the English tongue is-spoken, whether on the banks of the
eastern Gangesjor the western Mississippi. Her path was her
own; and shoals of imitators have arisen alike at home, and on
the other side of the Atlantic, who, destitute of her animating
genius, have mimicked her themes, and parodied her senti-
ments and language, without being able to reach its height.
In her poetry, religious truth, and intellectual beauty meet
together; and assuredly it is not the less calculated to refine
the taste and exalt the imagination, because it addresses itself
almost exclusively to the better feelings of our nature alone.
Over all her pictures of humanity are spread the glory and the
grace reflected from purity of murals, delicacy of perception
and conception, sublimity of religious faith, and warmth of
patriotism; and turning from the dark and degraded, whether
in subject or sentiment, she seeks out those verdant oases in
the desert of human life, on which the affections may most
pleasantly rest. Her poetry is intensely and entirely feminine
—and, in our estimation, this is the highest praise which could
be awarded it—it could have been written by a woman only;
for although in the "records" of her sex we have the female
character delineated in all the varied phases of baffled passions
and of ill-requited affection; of heroical self-denial, and of
withering hope deferred; of evotedness tried in the furnace of
affliction, and of
"Gentle feelings long subdued,
Subdued, and cherished long;"
yet its energy resembles that of the dove, "pecking the hand
that hovers o'er its mate," and its exaltation of thought is not
of the daring kind, which doubts and derides, or even questions,
but which clings to the anchor of hope, and looks forwaid with
faith and reverential fear. _ _ .

Mrs. Ifeman ;has written much, and, as with all authors in
like predicament, her strains are of various degrees of excel-
lence. Independently of this, her different works will be dif-
ferently estimated, as to their relative value, by different minds;
but, amOngthe lyrics of the English language which can never
die, we hesitate not to assign places to The Hebrew Mother—
The Treasures of the Deep—The Spirit's Return—The Homes
of England—The Better Land—The Hour of Death—The
Trumpet—and The Graves of a Household. In these "gems
of purest ray serene," the peculiar genius of Mrs. Hernans
breathes, and burns, and shines pre-eminent; for her forte lay
in depicting whatever tends to beautify and embellish domestic
life—the gentle overflowings of love and friendship—" home-
bred delights and heartfelt happiness"—the associations of
local attachment—and 'the influences of religious feelings over
the soul, whether arising from the varied circumstances and
situations of man, or from the aspects of external nature. We
would only he, e add, •by way of remark, that the wittings of
Mrs.,Hemans seem to' divide themselves into two pretty dis-
tin'et portions—the first comprehending her Modern Greece,
Wallace, Dartmoor, Sciptic, Historic Scenes, and other pro-
duCtions, up to tlie"pirblicatiotr of the Forest Sanctuary; and
the latter comprehending that volume, The Records-of Woman,
The Scenes and Hymns of Life, and all her suLsequent pro-