As many others we could quote; these examples are all taken from the earlier stanzas of "A Lay of the Early Rose."

Our fair poetess must have been thinking of Hudibras :

"And other deleterious medicines,

So those who took them are all dead since!"

There are also many evidences of affectation, which somewhat mar the full effect of her verse:

"There, Shakspere, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o' the world! Oh, eyes sublime,
With tears and laughter for all time!"

She is also too much addicted to a slovenly way of writing, which in so great an author is doubly vexatious. Mark how the lines lose their force by continually running into each other. The completeness of the thought is entirely lost:

"Euripides, with close and mild

Scholastic lips, that could be wild,
And laugh or sob out like a child.

Right in the classes-Sophocles

With that king's look which down the trees,
Followed the dark effigies

Of the loud Theban-"

and so on!

The kindness of an American friend, at our request, has enabled us to lay before our readers some specimens of the correspondence of this fine poetess. We feel the more pleasure as it evidences the warm feeling which animates her towards this great Republic. This, however, must be the case with every intelligent English thinker, for it is impossible not to admire the energy, sagacity, and adventurous spirit of the western Anglo-Saxon,

"The cataracts and mountains you speak of, have been, are, mighty dreams to me; and the great people, which, proportionate to that scenery, is springing up in their midst to fill a yet vaster futurity, is dearer to me than a dream. America is our brother land, and though a younger brother, sits already in the teacher's seat and expounds the common rights of our humanity. It would be strange indeed if we in England did not love and exult in America; if English poets, of whom I am least, if at all-did not receive with a peculiar feeling of gratitude and satisfaction, the kind welcoming word of American readers. Believe me grateful to America, grateful to your Arcturus, to the MEMORY of your victories, must I say? grateful to the North American Review, grateful personally to yourself and your friend, and grateful to all; will you assure him of it, with no passing emotion. It is delightful and encouraging to me to think that there, among the cataracts and mountains,' which I never shall see, and there is 'dream-land,' sound the voices of friends; and it shall be a constant effort with me (as I told Arcturus before) to deserve, presently, in some better measure, the kindness for which I never can be more grateful than now.

"We have one Shakspere between us, your land and ours, have we not? and one Milton, and now we are waiting for you to give us another. Niagara ought,

"And music born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into his face.'

In the meantime we give honor to those tuneful voices of your people, which prophecy, a yet sweeter music than they utter. You do honor to my verses in permitting them to approach and breathe the sweet air' of Mr. Bryant's.

"You will wonder a good deal, but would do so less if you were aware of the seclusion of my life, when I tell you that I never consciously stood face to face with an American in the whole course of it. I never had any sort of personal acquaintance with an American, man or woman, therefore you are all dreamed dreams to me- gentle dreams,' I may well account you.

"I do hope, however, that the book promised me, has not, dreamlike,' dispersed, because that seemed in the promise a golden dream.'”

"Wordsworth having been invited or commanded up for the purpose of attending the queen's ball, Rogers lent him a court dress and sword; and as he kissed Victoria's fair hand, she told him that she had never seen him before, and was to do so then? And so do queens speak to kings! He is as well as poss.ble, and reached his seventy-sixth birth day some few days ago. As to Rogers who lent him the sword, and who is a patriarch by profession, and several years past eighty, he continues to be young, though the world robs his coffers. He

makes assignations with the sun, to see it set in the park as he goes out to dinner, and catches the star light as he comes home. How delightful to keep such a young poet's heart alive to the simplest uses of beauty, after so many fears of the world. I do not know him personally—but I hear of his having said the other day at a concert- How sublime! presently we shall see the angels!'

"Mr. Lough, the sculptor, has finished a very beautiful reclining figure of Southey-but the expression of the face and general attitude is criticised as being ambiguous, and suggestive of a painful doubt as to whether the poet sleeps or dies. A book is falling from his hand—and the striking resemblance and exceeding beauty of execution are said to increase the painfulness of the ambiguity in question.

"Mr. Horne is still in Germany-but I expect soon to hear of his return. He thought of coming home in April—and here is April on the verge of turning into May.

"Mr. Chorley, of the Athenæum, and Music and Manners,' has a comedy on the anvil, and a novel of it, which last will appear, it is supposed, in the autumn at hand.

"Mr. Browning, with whom I have had some correspondence lately, is full of great intentions, the light of the future is on his forehead—also he will turn clear I think, as he turns on, he is a poet for posterity. I have a full faith in him as poet and prophet. He talks of going abroad again this summer.

"Poor Hood is dying; in a state of perfect preparation and composure, among the tears of his friends. His disease has been consumption—is in fact; but the disease is combined with water on the chest, which is expected to bring death. To a friend who asked him the other morning how it was with him, he answered with a characteristic playful pathos- The tide is rising, and I shall soon be in port.' It is said of him that he has no regrets for his life, except for the unborn works which he feels stirring in his dying brain-a species of regret which is peculiarly affecting to me, as it must be to all who understand it— Also, it is plain that he has genius greater than anything he has produced— and if this is plain and sad to us, how profoundly melancholly it must be to him. The only comfort is, that the end of development is not here. Sir Robert Peel wrote a long letter to him lately in a tone of respect and consideration, which was honorable to the minister, and relieved him from pecuniary anxiety, by attaching his pension to the life of his wife, rather than to his own. Poor Hood and poor Sidney Smith, how we are losing our Yoricks! All dumb!'—— 'All gone!'

"You will see the announcement of Mrs. Norton's new poem on the 'Child of the Islands,' namely, our little Prince of Wales, in which she exhorts him to all manner of righteousness and justice and proper kingliness. I have read the poem only in extracts as yet, but the melody, and cadence, and eloquence

of thought and tongue seem very delectable. Tell me what you think of Mrs. Butler's poems, which assuredly (at least to my mind's assurance) have more poetry in them, properly so called, if less of suavity and grace. And tell me if you have been taken and charmed as I have been, by the prose romance of the Improvisitore' translated from the Danish of Andersen by Mary Hewitt, and call it prose-but the poetry of it is true and rare."

"As to Flush, I thank you for him; for being glad that he has not arrived at the age of gravity and baldness,' and I can assure you of the fact of his not being yet four years old, (the very prime of his life,) and of his having lost no zest for the pleasures of the world-such as eating sponge-cake and drinking coffee a la creme. He lies by me on the sofa, where I lie and write; he lies quite at ease between the velvet of my gown and the fur of my couvre-pied, and has no wicked dreams, I can answer for it, of a hare out of breath, or of a partridge shot through the whirring wing; if he sees a ghost at all, it is of a little mouse which he killed once by accident. He is as innocent as the first dog, when Eve patted him. I had a visit the other day from Mrs. Jameson, and was delighted with her, of course. She is one of those fervid admirers of your America, who constitute, in fact, the flower of our England. Harriet Martineau's mesmeric experience (and she, by the way, is another instance) is making a great noise and sensation here, and producing some vexation among her unbelieving friends. It was, however, worthy of herself, having, according to her own belief, received a great benefit from means not only questionable, but questioned, to come forward bravely and avouch the truth of it. Do you believe at all? I do, but it is in the highest degree repulsive to me as a subject, and suggestive of horror. It is making great way in England, and, as far as I can understand, is disputed more by the unlearned than by the learned. Let me hear from you—I am, most gratefully, your friend."

"Wakondah has appeared, and having written to you of the delay in his avatar, I write quickly to apprise you of its occurrence, assuring you, at the same time, that if I was obliged to you for your intended gift, my gratitude has ¡ncreased with my knowledge of its value. The poem is a fragment indeed, and so fragmentary as to forbid all guessing at the full design and ultimate aspect of the whole; still there are two great goods obvious in it; one is, the Americanism of the subject, and the other, a force and energy, and occasional majesty of expression and cadence, which are not common qualifications of poems, whether American or European; I am much struck by such lines as these, for instance:

And I earnestly hope that Wakondah may attain his full bulk' as a worthy national poem, and be recognised as such on either side of the Atlantic. When American poets write, as they too often do, English poems, must not the sad reason be that they draw their inspiration from the English poets, rather than from the grand omnipresence of nature; must not both cause and result partake of a certain wrongness? I fear so. And all should be hope, and nothing fear, in America! You have room there for whole choruses of poets-Autochthones -singing out of the ground. You, with your Niagara for a Hippocrene, and your silent cities of the woods, too old for ruins, and your present liberties, and your aspirations filling the future."

"Before all this, I should have told you that I have heard from Mr. Tennyson, and that he uses, in speaking of the newspapers, these words: The criticism is, on the whole, friendly and genial, and I have every reason to be obliged to the writer.'

"I am sure you will sympathize with many English hearts in my dear friend Miss Mitford's distressing embarrassments, as the public prints bring to your knowledge; and I can scarcely be wrong in telling you that her appeal to the tenderness of her friends, and the gratitude of her readers, has been answered here with a liberality adequate to our expectations. She is admirable in domestic life, admirable in literature, and womankind may be doubly proud of her, and the fortune should be worthy of the merit.

"I will not write to you any more to-day, you will lose your patience with me for ever if I do."

These passages, for they are but passages from an ample correspondence, seem to us to partake of the best characteristics of the best style of letter-writing; graceful, various, compact of matter, friendly and familiar. They do as much to advance Miss Barrett personally in the esteem of the world, as her noble poems have done in its admiration. Her cordial liking for America, and her lofty hopes of its progress in literature, must be grateful to all