the first to be pierced by the thorns;"

and so it is with poets: they feel intensely before they can make
others feel even superficially.

And there are those who can talk lightly and irreverently of the
sufferings from which spring such exquisite, such glorious music,
unconscious that the fine organization and delicate susceptibility of
the minds of Genius which give such precious gifts to delight others,
receive deep wounds from weapons that could not make an incision on
impenetrable hearts like their own. Yes, the hearts of people of genius
may be said to resemble the American maple-trees, which must be pierced
ere they yield their honied treasures.

If Mrs. Hemans had been as happy as she deserved to be, it is probable
that she would never have written the exquisite poems I have been
reading; for the fulness of content leaves no room for the sweet and
bitter fancies engendered by an imagination that finds its Hippocrene
in the fountain of Sorrow, whose source is in the heart, and can only
flow when touched by the hand of Care.

Well may England be proud of such poetesses as she can now boast!
Johanna Baillie, the noble-minded and elevated; Miss Bowles, the pure,
the true; Miss Mitford, the gifted and the natural; and Mrs. Hemans and
Miss Landon, though last not least in the galaxy of Genius, with
imaginations as brilliant as their hearts are generous and tender. Who
can read the productions of these gifted women, without feeling a
lively interest in their welfare, and a pride in belonging to the
country that has given them birth?

Lord B---- arrived yesterday, and, Heaven be thanked! is in better
health. He says the spring is three weeks more advanced at Paris than
in London. He is delighted at the Catholic Question having been
carried; and trusts, as I do, that Ireland will derive the greatest
benefit from the measure. How few, with estates in a province where so
strong a prejudice is entertained against Roman Catholics as exists in
the north of Ireland, would have voted as Lord B---- has done; but,
like his father, Lord B---- never allows personal interest to interfere
in the discharge of a duty! If there were many such landlords in
Ireland, prejudices, the bane of that country, would soon subside. Lord
B---- came back laden with presents for me. Some of them are quite
beautiful, and would excite the envy of half my sex.

Received letters from good, dear Sir William Gell, and the no less dear
and good Arch