No where, indeed, can we find a more pure and refined idea of home than that which pervades Mrs. Hemans's writings on the subject. She reproduces the conception in very many instances, and always with the same chasteness. The Temporal home suggests the Spiritual. The idea of heaven as a home is beautifully wrought out in her lines called The Two Homes , wherein a desolate stranger has a glowing picture of a happy home placed before him, and then is asked to describe his own. Her lovingness of feeling is exquisite.
Real affection is ever mild, ever gracious and benign.
Far different is Mrs. Hemans. Affection is with her a serene, radiating principle, mild and ethereal in its nature, gentle in its attributes, pervading and lasting in its effects. Mrs. Hemans's Poem is a truly poetical version of this touching fact. I have ask'd the ancient desert To give my dead a place, Where the stately footsteps of the free Alone should leave a trace. Mrs. Hemans has all the harmony of expression, all the subtle perception and refined love of beauty, which distinguish her sex.