"The Songs of the Affections," and the "Scenes and Hymns of Life," will long remain to testify.
In music and drawing the acquirements of Mrs Hemans were such as naturally might have been expected, in a mind so fraught with taste and imagination. She preferred in the former what was national and melancholy; and her strains adapted for singing were, of course, framed to the tones most congenial to the temperament of her own mind. How successfully wed to the magic of sweet sound many of her verses have been by her sister, no lover of music need to be reminded. The "Roman Girl's Song" is full of a solemn classic beauty; and, in one of her letters, it is said that of the "Captive Knight," Sir Walter Scott never was weary. Indeed, it seems in his mind to have been the song of Chivalry, representative of the English; as the Flowers of the Forest was of the Scottish; the Cancionella Espanola of the Spanish; and the Rhine Song of the
