XI.

ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER.

1825-1864.

Birth at Bedford Square-" Barry Cornwall "-"Golden-tressèd Adelaide " -Contributor to Household Words as "Miss Mary Berwick "-Goes to Italy-The truth comes out--Two voices-Legends and Lyrics— "A little changeling spirit "Victoria Regia-Illness and death.

S it possible for a shy, sensitive girl, living principally in her father's drawing-room, going little into the busy world, and unfitted for rough and stormy paths—is it possible for her to "make her life sublime"? This is the problem which many women have to solve, and often with little success; often, dispirited and cast down, they give up the attempt in despair, and content themselves with busy idleness, and with gossip which generally degenerates into scandal and mischief-making. But, fortunately, this was not the case with Adelaide Procter; her life, short though it was, only reaching to thirty-eight years, was a fruitful one, and left behind it some "footprints on the sands of time" which may give many of her shipwrecked sisters "courage to take heart again."

Her success stole upon her gradually-unlooked for and unexpected. The demand for her poems is said to have been "far in excess of any poetry, except Tennyson's." In America her popularity is equally great, one of the

POPULAR POEMS.

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prettiest one-volume editions of her poems being printed at Boston. They have also been translated into German and other languages. Not only do young ladies shed tears over her melodious and touching verses, learned men and shrewd critics also acknowledge their charm, and musical composers have pounced eagerly upon them as treasures which are not to be found every day.

Adelaide Procter did not write songs for the people; she did not, like Lady Nairn and Lady Anne Barnard, give us ballads of homely life which touch chords that are common to all. She dealt rather with the lessons which come from loss and disappointment, of the beauty of resignation, patience, and self-sacrifice; and in doing this she brought out those delicate shades of feeling-what the French call nuances—which are so difficult to express in words. She knew exactly when and how to leave off, she knew how to give the atmosphere of a thought: we breathe it in rather than read it; and this is the gift of a true poet. As Hawthorne says, "The element of poetry is air; we know the poet by his atmospheric effects, by the blue of his distances, by the softening of every hard outline, by the silver mist. in which he veils deformity and clothes what is common, so that it changes to awe-inspiring mystery."

It is this "element of air," this delicate spirituality, which has made Adelaide Procter's poems suitable for music. They are peculiarly songful. Wherever we live, whether amongst acres of brick and mortar or buried in the depths of country villages, we are sure to find pianos, and wherever there are pianos there are piles of music, and amongst this music we are certain to find The Lost Chord or The Message, The Doubting Heart or Cleansing Fires. Blumenthal and Sullivan have married their music to Adelaide Procter's suggestive words, and so these songs have been handed down from London concert-halls till they have received the stamp of popularity-that magical hall-mark which so many have yearned for in vain. One

of the most impressive of modern songs is The Storm, with its refrain of Miserere Domini, which some of our best contralto singers have made so popular.

Several of her sacred songs have taken their places in our hymn-books. One of them

"The shadows of the evening hours

Fall from the dark'ning sky"

may be heard through the grey arches of Westminster Abbey as well as in the humblest dissenting chapel. Professional and amateur reciters are largely indebted to Adelaide Procter. She has given them one of their most popular pieces-The Story of a Faithful Soul; and the Legend of Provence, with a musical accompaniment, is one of Clifford Harrison's favourite selections. As I listened to him at sunny Montreux, the thought of Adelaide Procter came to me, sitting, "with the lights extinguished, by the hearth, the flickering giant-shadows closing round, all dull, all dark, save when the leaping flame lit up a picture's ancient frame."

Adelaide Anne Procter was born at 25, Bedford Square, London, on the 30th of October, 1825. She was the eldest daughter of Bryan Waller Procter, the author of many poems and dramatic pieces, one of which, Mirandola, was acted sixteen times at Covent Garden, and produced the considerable sum of £630. Mr. Procter always wrote under the name of Barry Cornwall. It is under this name that he gave us the song of The Sea! the Sea! the Open Sea! but the only time this enthusiastic sea-lover was on the watery element he was grievously sea-sick, so he allowed himself a good deal of poetical license. Miss Martineau says that his favourite method was to compose alone in a crowd, and he said he did his best when walking the London streets. He had an odd habit of running into a shop to secure his verses, often carrying them away on scraps of crumpled paper in which cheese or sugar had been wrapped. He was quite a