connections. Unfortunately his health had been undermined by the vicissitudes of a military life—more particularly by the hardships he had endured in the disastrous retreat to Corunna, and by the fever, which proved so fatal to many of our troops in the Walcheren expedition. Indeed to such an extent was this breaking up, as to render it necessary for him, a few years after their marriage, to exchange his native climate for the milder sky of Italy.
The literary pursuits of Mrs Hemans rendering it ineligible for her to leave England, she continued to reside with her mother and sister at a quiet and pretty spot, near St Asaph, in North Wales; where, in the bosom of her family, entirely devoted to literature, and to the education of five interesting boys, in whose welfare centred all the energies of her mind and heart, she
"Trod in gentle peace her guileless way;"
and won more and more on public regard and estimation by the simple and pathetic beauty
