No more will fear to die."
The same vault, as nearly as possible three years afterward, received the remains of her faithful and very superior servant, Anna Creer, a native of the isle of Man, who had lived with her seven years, and, after her death, married Mr. Jolliffe, the master of the house. The worthy man was much affected in speaking of the circumstance, and bore also the highest testimony to the character of Mrs. Hemans, saying, "it was impossible for any one to know her without loving her." To such a tribute, what can be added? The perfection of human character is to excite at once admiration and lasting affection.
Cape Coast Castle
L. E. L.
There is not much to be said about the homes and haunts of Mrs. Maclean, or, as I shall call her in this article, by her poetical cognomen, L. E. L. She was a creature of town and social life. The bulk of her existence was spent in Hans-place, Sloane-street, Chelsea. Like Charles Lamb, she was so molded to London habits and tastes, that that was the world to her. The country was not to her what it is to those who have passed a happy youth there, and learned to sympathize with its spirit, and enjoy its calm. In one respect she was right. Those who look for society alone in the country, are not likely to be much pleased with the change from London, where every species of intelligence concentrates; where the rust of intellectual sloth is pretty briskly rubbed off, and old prejudices, which often lie like fogs in low still nooks of the country, are blown away by the lively winds of discussion. Though descended from a country family, and spending some time, as a child, in the country, she was not there long enough to cultivate those associations with places and things which cling to the heart in after-life. Her mind, naturally quick, and all her tastes, were developed in the city. City life was part and parcel of her being; and as she was one of the most brilliant and attractive of its children, we must be thankful to take her as she was. It robs us of nothing but of certain attributes of the picturesque in the account of her abodes.
Her ancestors, it seems, from Mr. Blanchard's memoir of her, were, about the commencement of the eighteenth century, settled at Crednall in Herefordshire, where they enjoyed some landed property. A Sir William Landon was a successful participator in the South Sea Bubble, but afterward contrived to lose the whole patrimonial estates. A descendant of Sir William was the great-grandfather of L. E. L. He was rector of Nursted and Ilsted in Kent, and a zealous antagonist of all dissent. His son was rector of Tedstone Delamere, near Bromyard, Herefordshire. At his death, the property of the family being exhausted, his children, eight in number, were left to make their way through the world as they could. Miss Landon's father, John Landon, was the eldest of these children. He went to sea and made two voyages, one to the coast of Africa, and one to Jamaica. His friend and patron, Admiral Bowyer, dying, his career in the naval service was stopped. In the mean time, the next of his brothers, Whittington Landon, had acquired promotion in the Church, and eventually became Dean of Exeter. By his influence the father of the poetess was established as a partner in the prosperous house of Adair, army agents, in Pall Mall. On this he married Catherine Jane Bishop, a lady of Welsh extraction, and settled at No. 25, in Hans-place. Here Miss Landon was born, on the 14th of August, 1802. Beside her, the only other surviving child was a brother, the present Rev. Whittington Henry Landon.
In her sixth year she was sent to school to Miss Rowden at No. 22, Hans-place; the house in which she was destined to pass the greater part of her life. This lady, herself a poetess, afterward became Countess St. Quentin, and died near Paris. In this school Miss Mitford was educated, and here Lady Caroline Lamb was for a time an inmate. At this period, however, Miss Landon was here only a few months. She had occasionally been taken into the country to a farm in which her father was deeply interested, called Coventry-farm, in Hertfordshire. She now went with her family to reside at Trevor-park, East Barnet, where her education was conducted by her cousin, Miss Landon. She was now about seven years old, and here the family continued to live about six years. Here she read a great deal of romance and poetry, and began to show the operation of her fancy by relating long stories to her parents, and indulging in long, meditative walks in the lime walk in the garden. Her brother was her companion, and, spite of her nascent authorship, they seemed to have played, and romped, and enjoyed themselves as children should do. They read Plutarch, and had a great ambition of being Spartans. An anecdote is related of their taking vengeance on the gardener for some affront by shooting at him with arrows with nails stuck in them for piles, and of his tossing them upon a quickset hedge for punishment; most probably one of the old-fashioned square-cut ones, where they would be rather prisoners than sufferers. This man, whose name was Chambers, Miss Landon taught to read; and he afterward saved money, and retired to keep an inn at Barnet.
Now she read the Arabian Nights, Scott's Metrical Romances, and Robinson Crusoe, beside a book called Silvester Trampe. This last professed to be a narrative of travels in Africa, and seems especially to have fascinated her imagination. No doubt that the united effects of this book, of other African travels, and of the fact of her father and one of her cousins having made voyages to that continent, had no little influence in deciding the fatal step of marrying to go out to Cape Coast. To the happy days spent at Trevor-park, and the reading of books like these, always a period of elysium to a child, Miss Landon makes many references, both in her poems, and her prose sketches, called Traits and Trials of Early Life. Some lines addressed to her brother commemorate these imaginative pleasures very graphically:—
"It was an August evening, with sunset in the trees,