if every leaf were the tongue of a separate spirit. Her favourite season was the autumn, though her finest verses are dedicated to the spring. Here, too, we devoutly participate in her feelings. The shortening day-the new outbursting from their veil of daylight of those, in summer, neglected tremblers, the stars-the yellow corn-the grey and pensive light-the joy of harvest-the fine firing of all the groves (not the "fading but the kindling of the leaf") -the frequent and moaning winds-the spiritual quiet in which, at other times, the stubble fields are bathed—the rekindling of the cheerful fires upon the hearth-the leaves falling to their own sad music-the rising stackyards-the wild fruit, ripened at the cold sun of the frost-the "ineffable gleams of light dropping upon favourite glens or rivers, or hills that shine out like the shoulder of Pelops" -the beseeching looks with which, trembling on the verge of winter, the belated season seems to say, "Love me well, I am the last of the sisterhood that you can love”—in short, that indescribable charm which breathes in its very air and colours its very light, and sheds its joy of grief over all things, have concurred with some sweet and some sad associations to render autumn to us the loveliest and the dearest of all the seasons. As Mrs Hemans loved woodland scenery for its kindly "looks of shelter," so she loved the autumn principally for its correspondence with that fine melancholy which was the permanent atmosphere of her being. In one of her letters, speaking of an autumn day, she says, "The day was one of a kind I like-soft, still, and grey, such as makes the earth appear a 'pensive but a happy place."" We have sometimes thought that much of Wordsworth's poetry should always be read, and can never be so fully felt as in the autumn, when "Laodamia,” at least, must have been written. Should not poems, as well as pictures, have their peculiar light, in which alone they can properly be seen? Should not Scott be read in spring, Shelley in the fervid summer, Wordsworth in autumn,

Cowper and Byron in winter, Shakspere all the year round?

In many points Mrs Hemans reminds us of a poet just named, and whom she passionately admired, namely, Shelley. Like him, drooping, fragile, a reed shaken by the wind, a mighty wind, in sooth, too powerful for the tremulous reed on which it discoursed its music; like him, the victim of exquisite nervous organisation; like him, verse flowed on and from her, and the sweet sound often overpowered the meaning, kissing it, as it were, to death; like him, she was melancholy, but the sadness of both was musical, tearful, active, not stony, silent, and motionless, still less misanthropical and disdainful; like him, she was gentle, playful, they could both run about their prison garden, and dally with the dark chains which, they knew, bound them till death. Mrs Hemans, indeed, was not, like Shelley, a vates; she has never reached his heights nor sounded his depths, yet they are, to our thought, so strikingly alike as to seem brother and sister in one beautiful but delicate and

dying family. Their very appearance must have been similar. How like must the girl, Felicia Dorothea Browne, with the mantling bloom of her cheeks, her hair of a rich golden brown, and the ever-varying expression of her brilliant eyes, have been to the noble boy, Percy Bysshe Shelley, when he came first to Oxford, a fair-haired, bright-eyed enthusiast, on whose cheek and brow, and in whose eye was already beginning to burn a fire, which ultimately enwrapped his whole being in flames!

In Mrs Hemans's melancholy, one "simple" was wanting, which was largely mixed in Shelley's, that of faithless despondency. Her spirit was cheered by faith-by a soft and noble form of the softest noblest faith—a form, reminding us much from its balance of human, poetical, and celestial elements, of that of Jeremy Taylor-the "Shakspere of divines." Although, as we have said, her poetry is not, of prepense and purpose, the express image of her

religious thought, yet it is a rich illustration of the religious tendency of the female mind. Indeed, females may be called the natural guardians of morality and faith. These shall always be safe in the depths of the female intellect, and of the female heart-an intellect, the essence of which is worship-a heart, the element of which is love. Unhired, disinterested, spontaneous is the aid they give to the blessed cause; leaning, indeed, in their lovely weakness on the "worship of sorrow," they, at the same time, prop it up through the wide and holy influences which they wield. Their piety, too, is no fierce and foul polemic flame-it is that of the feelings-the quick instinctive sense of duty-the wonder-stricken soul and the loving heart-often it is not even a conscious emotion at all-but in Wordsworth's language-they lie in

"Abraham's bosom all the year,

And God is with them, when they know it not."

In Mrs Hemans's writings you find this pious tendency of her sex unsoiled by an atom of cant, or bigotry, or exclusiveness; and shaded only by so much pensiveness as attests its divinity and its depth: for as man's misery is said to spring from his greatness, so the gloom which often overhangs the earnest spirit arises from its more immediate proximity to the Infinite and the Eternal. And who would not be ready to sacrifice all the cheap sunshine of earthly success and satisfaction for even a touch of a shadow so sublime?

After all, the nature of this poetess is more interesting than her genius, or than its finest productions. These descend upon us like voices from a mountain summit, suggesting to us an elevation of character far higher than themselves. If not, in a transcendent sense, a poet, her life was a poem. Poetry coloured all her existence with a golden light-poetry presided at her needlework-poetry mingled with her domestic and her maternal duties-poetry sat down with her to her piano-poetry fluttered her hair and

flushed her cheek in her mountain rambles-poetry quivered in her voice, which was a "sweet sad melody"-poetry accompanied her to the orchard, as she read the "Talisman," in that long glorious summer day which she has made immortal-and poetry attended her to the house of God, and listened with her to the proud pealing organ, as to an echo from within the veil. Poetry performed for her a still tenderer ministry; it soothed the deep sorrows, on which we dare not enter, which shaded the tissue of her historyit mixed its richest cupful of the "joy of grief" for her selected lips-it lapped her in a dream of beauty, through which the sad realities of life looked in, softened and mellowed in the medium. What could poetry have done more for her, except, indeed, by giving her that sight "as far as the incommunicable "—that supreme vision which she gives so rarely, and which she bestows often as a curse, instead of a blessing? Mrs Hemans, on the other hand, was too favourite a child of the Muse to receive any such baleful boon. Poetry beautified her life, blunted and perfumed the thorns of her anguish, softened the pillow of her sickness, and combined with her firm and most feminine faith to shed a gleam of soft and tearful glory upon her death.

Thus lived, wrote, suffered, and died "Egeria." Without farther seeking to weigh the worth, or settle the future place of her works, let us be thankful to have had her among us, and that she did what she could, in her bright, sorely-tried, yet triumphant passage. She grew in beauty; was blasted where she grew; rained around her poetry, like bright tears from her eyes; learned in suffering what she taught in song; died, and all hearts to which she ever ministered delight, have obeyed the call of Wordsworth, to

"Mourn rather for that holy spirit,
Mild as the spring, as ocean deep ;—
For her who, ere her summer faded,
Has sunk into a dreamless sleep."

MRS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

IN selecting Mrs Hemans as our first specimen of Female Authors, we did so avowedly, because she seemed to us the most feminine writer of the day. We now select Mrs Browning for the opposite reason, that she is, or at least is said by many to be, the most masculine of our female writers.

To settle the respective spheres and calibres of the male and the female mind is one of the most difficult of philosophical problems. To argue, merely, that because the mind. of woman has never hitherto produced a "Paradise Lost," or a "Principia," it is therefore for ever incapable of producing similar masterpieces, seems to us unfair, for various reasons. In the first place, how many ages elapsed e'er the male mind realised such prodigies of intellectual achievement? And do not they still stand unparalleled and almost unapproached? And were it not as reasonable to assert that man as that woman can renew them no more? Secondly, because the premise is granted-that woman has not does the conclusion follow, that woman cannot excogitate an argument as great as the "Principia," or build up a rhyme as lofty as the "Paradise Lost?" Would it not have been as wise for one who knew Milton only as the Milton of "Lycidas" and "Arcades," to have contended that he was incapable of a great epic poem? And is there nothing in Madame De Stael, in Rahel the Germaness, in Mary Somerville, and even in Mary Wollstonecraft, to suggest the idea of heights, fronting the very peaks of the Principia and the Paradise, to which woman may yet attain? Thirdly, has not woman understood and appreciated the greatest works of genius as fully as man? Then may she in time equal them; for what is true appreciation but the sowing of a germ in the mind, which shall