Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/149

Her juvenile poem "Edwin and Eltruda" enriched her in fame only; but "Peru," being published by subscription (blessed days when friends could be turned into subscribers!), must have been fairly remunerative; and we hear of its author in London giving "literary breakfasts," a popular but depressing form of entertainment. If ever literature be "alien to the natural man," it is at the breakfast hour. Miss Williams subsequently went to Paris, and became an ardent revolutionist, greatly to the distress of poor Miss Seward, whose enthusiasm for the cause of freedom had suffered a decline, and who kept imploring her friend to come home. "Fly, my dear Helen, that land of carnage!" she wrote beseechingly. But Helen couldn't fly, being then imprisoned by the ungrateful revolutionists, who seemed unable, or unwilling, to distinguish friends from foes. She had moreover by that time allied herself to Mr. John Hurford Stone, a gentleman of the strictest religious views, but without moral prejudices, who abandoned his lawful wife for Apollo's offspring, and who, as a consequence, preferred living on the Continent. Therefore Miss