Felicia Dorothea Hemans, 1794-1835, was born in Liverpool.  Her father, whose name was Browne, was an Irish merchant.  She spent her childhood in Wales, began to write poetry at a very early age, and was married when about eighteen to Captain Hemans.  By this marriage, she became the mother of five sons; but, owing to differences of taste and disposition, her husband left her at the end of six years; and by mutual agreement they never again lived together.  Mrs. Hemans now made literature a profession, and wrote much and well.  In 1826 Prof.  Andrews Norton brought out an edition of her poems in America, where they became popular, and have remained so.

Mrs. Hemans’s poetry is smooth and graceful, frequently tinged with a shade of melancholy, but never despairing, cynical, or misanthropic.  It never deals with the highest themes, nor rises to sublimity, but its influence is calculated to make the reader truer, nobler, and purer. ###

The breaking waves dashed high
  On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
  Their giant branches tossed;

And the heavy night hung dark,
  The hills and waters o’er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
  On the wild New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes,
  They, the true-hearted, came;
Not with the roll of the stirring drums. 
  And the trumpet that sings of fame.

Not as the flying come,
  In silence, and in fear;—­
They shook the depths of the desert gloom
  With their hymns of lofty cheer.

Amidst the storm they sang,
  And the stars heard, and the sea;
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
  To the anthem of the free!

The ocean eagle soared
  From his nest by the white wave’s foam;
And the rocking pines of the forest roared,—­
  This was their welcome home.

There were men with hoary hair
  Amidst that pilgrim band: 
Why had they come to wither there,
  Away from their childhood’s land?

There was woman’s fearless eye,
  Lit by her deep love’s truth;
There was manhood’s brow, serenely high,
  And the fiery heart of youth.

What sought they thus afar? 
  Bright jewels of the mine? 
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? 
  They sought a faith’s pure shrine!

Ay, call it holy ground,
  The soil where first they trod: 
They have left unstained what there they found,—­
  Freedom to worship God.

Note.—­The Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, Mass, Dec. 11th (Old Style), 1620.  The rock on which they first stepped, is in Water Street of the village, and is covered by a handsome granite canopy, surmounted by a colossal statue of Faith.

LIX.  NECESSITY OF EDUCATION. (228)

We must educate!  We must educate! or we must perish by our own prosperity.  If we do not, short will be our race from the cradle to the grave.  If, in our haste to be rich and mighty, we outrun our literary and religious institutions, they will never overtake us; or only come up after the battle of liberty is fought and lost, as spoils to grace the victory, and as resources of inexorable despotism for the perpetuity of our bondage.