Page images
PDF
EPUB

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR

OF THE LATE

MRS HEMANS.

As this is the last of a series of poetical volumes, which, making their appearance at intervals during the last nineteen years, have in an especial manner arrested the attention of the imaginative and the intellectual; and, as all have naturally a desire to know something of those from whom they have received mental gratification or delight, it has been determined, that a brief biographical memoir of the accomplished and lamented author, should be prefixed to these pages.

Felicia Dorothea Browne was born in Liverpool on the 25th of September 1793. Her mother, whose family-name was Wagner, although a German by appellation, was of Italian descent. Her father was a merchant of considerable eminence; but, being engaged in extensive speculations, during the most unfixed and varying periods of the French Revolution, he, in common with many others, from the unlooked for and destructive changes of that eventful time, suffered under those reverses which are incidental to a commercial life. A few years afterwards, and while his daughter was consequently still very young, he retired with his family into Wales, and resided for some time at Gwrych, near Abergele, in Denbighshire.

In that secluded region, where the romantic varieties of sea and mountain scenery are beautifully combined and contrasted, the lamented subject of this short memoir was educated by a mother, not only of exemplary virtue, but

« PreviousContinue »