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xii is deep and sincere, it may not be without interest to peruse an extract from this article, written at a time when her extraordinary powers were far less generally recognised than now:—

"If the poetess does not always command our unqualified approbation, we are at all times disposed to bend in reverence before the deep-hearted and highly accomplished woman—a woman whose powers appear to us to extend over a wider and profounder range of thought and feeling than ever before fell within the intellectual compass of any of the softer sex. If we might venture to divine this lady's moral and intellectual character from the general tone of her writings, we should say, that never did woman's mind dwell more habitually among the thoughts of a solemn experience — never was woman's genius impressed more profoundly with the earnestness of life, or sanctified more purely by the overshadowing awfulness of death. She aspires to write as she has lived; and certainly her poetry opens up many glimpses into the history of a pure and profound heart which has felt and suffered much. At the same time, a reflective cast of intellect lifts her feelings into a higher and calmer region than that of ordinary sorrow. There are certain delicate and felicitous peculiarities in the constitution of her sensibilities, which frequently impart a rare and subtle originality to emotions which are as old, and as widely diffused, as the primeval curse. The spirit of her poetry appears to us to be eminently religious; not because