urns in Edinburgh when he first came up to that city to
bring out his volume of poems. "I have seen many a handsome man in my
time," said the old lady one day to us at dinner, "but never such a pair
of eyes as young Robbie Burns kept flashing from under his beautiful
brow." Mrs. Montague was much interested in Charles Sumner, and
predicted for him all the eminence of his after-position. With a certain
other American visitor she had no patience, and spoke of him to me as a
"note of interrogation, too curious to be comfortable."

I distinctly recall Adelaide Procter as I first saw her on one of my
early visits to her father's house. She was a shy, bright girl, and the
poet drew my attention to her as she sat reading in a corner of the
library. Looking at the young maiden, intent on her book, I remembered
that exquisite sonnet in her father's volume, bearing date November,
1825, addressed to the infant just a month after her birth:--

Child of my heart! My sweet, beloved First-born!
Thou dove who tidings bring'st of calmer hours!
Thou rainbow who dost shine when all the showers
Are past or passing! Rose which hath no thorn,
No spot, no blemish,--pure and unforlorn,
Untouched, untainted! O my Flower of flowers!
More welcome than to bees are summer bowers,
To stranded seamen life-assuring morn!
Welcome, a thousand welcomes! Care, who clings
Round all, seems loosening now its serpent fold:
New hope springs upward; and the bright world seems
Cast back into a youth of endless springs!
Sweet mother, is it so? or grow I old,
Bewildered in divine Elysian dreams!

I whispered in the poet's ear my admiration of the sonnet and the
beautiful subject of it as we sat looking at her absorbed in the volume
on her knees. Procter, in response, murmured some words expressive of
his joy at having such a gift from God to gladden his affectionate
heart, and he told me afterward what a comfort Adelaide had always been
to his household. He described to me a visit Wordsworth made to his
house one day, and how gentle the old man's aspect was when he looked at
the children. "He took the hand of my dear Adelaide in his," said
Procter, "and spoke some words to her, the recollection of which helped,
perhaps, with other things, to incline her to poetry." When a little
child "the golden-tressed Adelaide," as the poet calls her in one of
his songs, must often have heard her father read aloud his