in summer placed her Aeolian harp in the window:”  (thus by artificial excitement, feeding the fire that consumed her.) “In those pieces on which she bestowed more than ordinary pains, she was very secret; and if they were, by any accident, discovered in their unfinished state, she seldom completed them, and often destroyed them.  She cared little for any of her works after they were completed:  some, indeed, she preserved with care for future correction, but a great proportion she destroyed:  very many that are preserved, were rescued from the flames by her mother.  Of a complete poem, in five cantos, called ‘Rodri,’ and composed when she was thirteen years of age, a single canto, and part of another, are all that are saved from a destruction which she supposed had obliterated every vestige of it.”

She was often in danger, when walking, from carriages, &c., in consequence of her absence of mind.  When engaged in a poem of some length, she has often forgotten her meals.  A single incident, illustrating this trait in her character, is worth relating:—­She went out early one morning to visit a neighbour, promising to be at home to dinner.  The neighbour being absent, she requested to be shown into the library.  There she became so absorbed in her book, standing, with her bonnet unremoved, that the darkness of the coming night first reminded her she had forgotten her meals, and expended the entire day in reading.

She was peculiarly sensitive to music.  There was one song (it was Moore’s Farewell to his Harp) to which she “took a special fancy;” she wished to hear it only at twilight—­thus, with that same perilous love of excitement which made her place the windharp in the window when she was composing, seeking to increase the effect which the song produced upon a nervous system, already diseasedly susceptible; for it is said, that whenever she heard this song she became cold, pale, and almost fainting; yet it was her favourite of all songs, and gave occasion to these verses, addressed, in her fifteenth year, to her sister.

  When evening spreads her shades around,
    And darkness fills the arch of heaven;
  When not a murmur, not a sound
    To Fancy’s sportive ear is given;

  When the broad orb of heaven is bright,
    And looks around with golden eye;
  When Nature, softened by her light. 
    Seems calmly, solemnly to lie;

  Then, when our thoughts are raised above
    This world, and all this world can give,
  Oh, Sister! sing the song I love,
    And tears of gratitude receive.

  The song which thrills my bosom’s core,
    And, hovering, trembles half afraid,
  Oh, Sister! sing the song once more,
    Which ne’er for mortal ear was made.

  ’Twere almost sacrilege to sing
    Those notes amid the glare of day;
  Notes borne by angels’ purest wing,
    And wafted by their breath away.

  When, sleeping in my grass-grown bed,
    Shouldst thou still linger here above,
  Wilt thou not kneel beside my head,
    And, Sister! sing the song I love?