In 1830 Mrs. Hemans published her volume of Songs of the Affections. The principal of the poems, “A Spirit’s Return,” was suggested as the result of a favourite amusement—­that of winding up the evenings by telling ghost stories.  A discussion arose as to the feelings with which the presence and the speech of a visitant from another world would be most likely to impress the person so visited.  Mrs. Hemans contended that the predominant sensation would partake of awe and rapture, and that the person visited must thenceforward and for ever be inevitably separated from this world and its concerns—­that the soul which had once enjoyed so strange and spiritual communion must be raised by its experience too high for common grief to perplex or common joy to enliven.

     “The music of another land hath spoken. 
      No after-sound is sweet; this weary thirst!—­
      And I have heard celestial fountains burst. 
      What here shall quench it?”

IX.

HOME IN THE LAKE COUNTRY.

A visit to the Lakes of Westmoreland in 1830 was a source of great enjoyment to Mrs. Hemans.  The beauty of the district was one attraction, but the prospect of sharing the society of Mr. Wordsworth was a greater attraction.  Wearied out with the “glare and dust of celebrity,” she was longing for the hills and the quiet peacefulness of the Lake country.  It is needless to say that the first poetess of Nature was charmed with the first poet of Nature, and the poet with the poetess.  Her letters were full of expressions of delight and keen appreciation of the privilege she was enjoying.  Wordsworth was kindness itself.  “I am charmed with Mr. Wordsworth, whose kindness to me has quite a soothing influence over my spirits.  Oh! what relief, what blessing there is in the feeling of admiration when it can be freely poured forth!  ’There is a daily beauty in his life,’ which is in such lovely harmony with his poetry, that I am thankful to have witnessed and felt it.”

Mrs. Hemans, after staying a fortnight at Rydal Mount, took a little cottage called Dove’s Nest near the lake.  Here she was joined by her children, into whose pursuits she heartily threw herself.  This was a season of grateful rest to her.  “How shall I tell you of all the loveliness by which I am surrounded, of all the soothing and holy influence it seems shedding down into my inmost heart!  I have sometimes feared within the last two years, that the effect of suffering and adulation, and feelings too highly wrought and too severely tried, would have been to dry up within me the fountains of such peace and simple enjoyment; but now I know—­”

     ’Nature never did betray
      The heart that loved her.’

“I can think of nothing but what is pure, and true, and kind; and my eyes are filled with grateful tears even whilst I am writing to you.”  But even to this sweet retirement she was pursued by curious tourists, “hunting for lions in doves’ nests,” and by letters which threatened “to boil over the drawer to which they were consigned.”