This page has been validated.
xviii
BIOGRAPHER MEMOIR OF

first, which she cultivated with much interest, finding its literature most in unison with her own style of feeling and of thought. She took particular pleasure in the writings of Schiller and Goethe, and considered her intimacy with their works in particular, and with the many treasures of German literature generally, as having imparted an entirely new impulse to the powers of her own mind. Nor in this did she judge erroneously. About this time were composed some of those inimitable lyrics,—more especially "The Treasures of the Deep," "The Hebrew Mother," "The Voice of Spring," and "The Hour of Death," which the American critic Neale has quaintly characterized as "lumps of pure gold;" and which will find a response in the human bosom, till the end of all time. A deep and reverential study of our own Wordsworth was added to that of these continental classics; and, with what success, "The Records of Woman," "The Lays of Many Lands," "The Forest Sanctuary,"