Mrs Hemans s poetry is the production of a fine imagina tive and enthusiastic temperament, but not of a commanding intellect or very complex or subtle nature. It is the out come of a beautiful but singularly circumscribed life, a life spent in romantic seclusion, without much worldly experi ence, and warped and saddened by domestic unhappiness and real physical suffering. Perhaps from thsse circum stances, aided by a course of self-instruction at best desul tory and unguided, the emotional in a sensitive and intensely feminine nature was unduly cultivated ; and this undue preponderance of the emotional is a prevailing characteristic in Mrs Hemans s poetry, and one to which Scott alluded when he complained that it was " too poetical," that it con tained " too many flowers " and " too little fruit." Her genius beautiful and pleasing as it was was not of a very high order. Like her favourite music, it lay within a small compass, and gave little opportunity for intricate harmonies. Thus her tragedies, and her longer and more complicated poems, such as The Sceptic and Forest Sanctuary, though by no means devoid of striking passages, are the least not able of her works. It is not, however, as the writer of these more ambitious productions, which in her own time were but doubtful successes and are now rarely read, but as the authoress of many short occasional pieces, and especi ally as a lyrist, that Felicia Hemans has earned so high a place among our poets. In her lyrics she could concentrate her strength on the perfect expression of simple themes. Her skill in versification, her delicate ear for rhythm, and the few ruling sentiments of her nature here found ample scope. In her lyrics Mrs Hemans is uniformly graceful, tender, delicately refined, sometimes perhaps, even here, too fervent, too emotional, but always pure and spiritual in tone; and in these too she occasionally displays those rarer qualities which belong only to the finest lyric genius. Many of her poems, such as " The Treasures of the Deep," "The Better Land," "The Homes of England," " Casa- bianca," " The Palm Tree," " The Graves of a Household," " The Wreck," " The Dying Improvisator," and " The Lost Pleiad," have become standard English lyrics, and on the strength of these, and others such as these, Felicia Hemaus is ranked among our chief British lyrical poets.
An edition of Mrs Hemans s Poetical Works was published, 2 vols., in 1832 ; Poetical Remains, with Memoir by Delta, 1836 ; Memorials, &c., by H. F. Choi-ley, 1836; Recollections of Mrs Hemans, by Mrs Lawrence, 1836 ; Works of Mrs Hemans, with a Memoir of her Life, by her sister (Mrs Hughes), 7 vols., 1839, and American reprint, 2 vols., 1847; Early Blessings, a Collection of Poems ivrittcn between eight and fifteen years of age, with a Life of the Authoress, 1840; Poems, chronologically arranged, Edin., 1849; Poems, copyright edition, Edin. and London, 1872; Poetical Works, with critical memoir by W. M. Rossetti, London and Edin., 1873.
HEMEL-HEMPSTEAD, a market-town of England, county of Hertford, is pleasantly situated on the declivity of a hill near the river Gade, 23 miles N.W. of London, 1 miles from the Boxmoor station of the London and North- Western Railway, and on a branch line of the Midland Railway. The town consists almost wholly of one main street about a mile in length. Among the principal build ings are the parish church, cruciform in shape, and paitly Norman in style, surmounted by a lofty octagonal spire, and containing an old brass of the time of Edward III.; the town-hall, a long narrow building formerly supported on square wooden pillars, but whose open marketplace underneath has now been converted into a corn exchange ; the union workhouse, and the West Herts infirmary. The chief industry is straw plaiting, but there are also manu factories of paper, an iron foundry, breweries, and tanneries. The population of the township in 1871 was 5996, and of the parish 8720.
From its name, meaning high stead or place, the town is apparently of Saxon origin. In Domesday it is written Henamsteda and Hamelamestede. It received a charter of incorporation from Henry VIII., which was renewed by Cromwell. It still makes annual choice of a bailiff, but he possesses no magisterial authority.
HEMEROBAPTISTS, an ancient Jewish sect, so named from their observing a practice of daily ablution as an essential part of religion. Epiphanius, who mentions their doctrine as the fourth heresy among the Jews, classes the Hemerobaptists doctrinally with the Pharisees, from whom they differed only in, like the Sadducees, denying the resurrection of the dead. The name has been sometimes given to the Mendaeans on account of their frequent ablutions ; and in the Clementine Homilies (ii. 23) St John the Baptist is spoken of as a Hemerobaptist. Mention of the sect is made by Hegesippus (see Euseb., Hist. EccL, iv. 22) and by Justin Martyr in the Dialogue with Tryphon.
