34 Nicholson, Hemans — Nicholson Correspondence. 



scheme and was grateful. She also sent some further 

 poems, saying, " I always give j-ou discretionary power to 

 make what use you please of these productions." In the 

 same letter she writes, " Felicia has been studying the 

 Spanish language with great diligence, and has made 

 herself mistress of it, so that she can translate it and read 

 it equally well with the French and Italian, and she is 

 particularly pleased with it." 



When Mr. Nicholson heard, probably from her 

 Liverpool relations, that Felicia and Captain Hemans 

 were engaged to be married, he sent his congratulations, 

 and apparently made some enquiries about the fortunate 

 man. He does not appear to have preserved a draft of 

 his letter. Mrs. Browne replied on February 7th, 1812 :— 



"I must now, my dear Sir, expatiate with you upon a subject 

 very near my heart and which all your words and actions prove you to 

 have a most sincere interest in. I need not say that this relates to the 

 future hopes and fears for my beloved Felicia, whose youth and 

 peculiar frame of mind, make her naturally an object of my most anxious 

 maternal solicitations on the present momentous occasion of her life. 

 You will perhaps be surprised to hear that, young as she is, her present 

 attachment has been the cause of much anxiety to herself and the 

 object of it, for four years past ; and perhaps I may say it has, in a 

 great degree, alienated her mind from all delight in what the world 

 generally calls pleasure and from every wish but that of domestic 

 happiness. Though she is a child in years, yet her mind is so mature, 

 that I think her quite competent to decide for herself, on a subject 

 wherein she alone, is most deeply concerned ; and as splendor and 

 riches were never objects of any consideration with her (nor with me 

 for her) I trust she has as much prospect of happiness with the 

 man of her choice, and I hope, a competence, as can reasonably be 

 expected in this state of probation. He is a man whose morals and 

 manners are unexceptionable and in whom I feel an affectionate 

 interest, very little (if at all) less, than in my own sons. 



This will, I know, have great weight with you in the judgment you 

 will form on this occasion, and I trust the progress of Felicia's genius 

 towards perfection vnll not be impeded by the additional motive she 

 will have to cultivate it and that the ' Domestic Affections,' beautiful 

 as some of its ideas are, is but a humble pledge of what we are to 

 receive from her future pen. She has been wishing to write to you 



