ation. Instead of the steady glow of health, it was but too evident that the lamp of life was glimmering in the socket, and her compositions about that period, more especially her glorious lyric "Despondency and Aspiration," are evidently darkened by the gloom of a melancholy foreboding. Not unprofitably had the night of death cast these dreary shadows before; and on Saturday the 16th May 1835, Felicia Hemans met her fate with the calm resignation of a Christian.*[1] Nothing can be more indicative of the tone of her mind at this period, than the Sabbath Sonnet, with which the present volume concludes, and which was dictated from her deathbed, to her brother Major Browne, a short time before her decease. In that sad but beautiful composition, the situation of the writer is plaintively indicated; but faith upholds sinking nature, and the melancholy is mingled with, and triumphed over by,
- ↑ * Her remains were deposited in the vault of St Anne’s Church, Dublin.
