But as the heir of his great name, the young
And stately tree, whose rising strength ere long
Shall bear his trophies well.-And this is love!
This is man's love!-What marvel?-you ne'er made
Your breast the pillow of his infancy,

While to the fulness of your heart's glad heavings
His fair cheek rose and fell; and his bright hair
Waved softly to your breath!-You ne'er kept watch
Beside him, till the last pale star had set,

And morn, all dazzling, as in triumph, broke
On your dim weary eye; not yours the face
Which, early faded thro' fond care for him,
Hung o'er his sleep, and, duly as Heaven's light,
Was there to greet his wakening! You ne'er smooth'd
His couch, ne'er sung him to his rosy rest,

Caught his least whisper, when his voice from yours
Had learn'd soft utterance; press'd your lip to his,
When fever parch'd it; hush'd his wayward cries
With patient, vigilant, never-wearied love!

No! these are woman's tasks !-In these her youth,
And bloom of cheek, and buoyancy of heart,
Steal from her all unmark'd !-My boys! my boys!
Hath vain affection borne with all for this?
-Why were ye given me?"

When a woman can write like this, she ought to write. Her mind is national property. In the grand scheme of a popular literature, there are many departments which can alone be filled by the emanations of female genius. There is a fineness of apprehension, and a subtlety of feeling, peculiar to the weaker sex, and perhaps the result of that very weakness, which enables them to set some subjects in such lights, and to paint them in such colours, as the more robust intellect of men could never have imagined. A woman is so much more a creature of passion than man; her virtues and her failings flow so much more directly and visibly from the impulse of affection; her talent and her genius, her thoughts and her wishes, her natural qualities and her acquired accomplishments are so interchangeably blended, and all but identified with each other, that there results a wholeness of conception, and a vividness and reality of colouring in her mental efforts, which advantageously distinguishes them from the most powerful productions of men on the same subjects. Let the golden fragments of Sappho bear testimony to the truth of this remark; let those two mutilated bursts of female passion, be compared with the most happy and finished parts of Ovid or Tibullus, and we may have good reason to wish that envious time had spared to us but a hundred more lines

of the Lesbian Lady's, even at the price of one thousand hexameters and pentameters from the pens of the gentlemen of the Augustan age. There have been indeed such things as female translators of Newton, and female interpreters of Kant; but although these, and such like these, have, without doubt, displayed wonderful efforts of intellect, yet there is nothing in them peculiar to the sex; the same things are done as well, and for the most part better, by men; we admire them more for their novelty and strangeness, than for their intrinsic worth; we are surprised, rather than pleased. It is not our intention to analyse this volume minutely; we dislike the practice generally. It may perhaps be necessary to take a treatise or an essay to pieces, in order to give an adequate representation of the argument contained in it; but tò subject a poem, or a book of poems, to the same process, is equally injurious to the author, and useless to the public. A poem is valuable or worthless, according to its poetry; the mere story can have little to do with it, and it is the story alone which an analysis of this description affords to the reader. We think it more to the purpose to quote a specimen or two of the poetry comprised in this very delightful volume, and leave the world to judge for itself of the measure, and the strength of the intellectual powers of their author.

The following is the most original piece in the collection. We have heard but one opinion of its very extraordinary merit.

"ELYSIUM.

"In the Elysium of the ancients, we find none but heroes and persons who had either been fortunate or distinguished on earth; the children, and apparently the slaves and lower classes, that is to say, poverty, misfortune, and innocence, were banished to the infernal regions."-Chateaubriand, Genie du Christianisme.

"Fair wert thou, in the dreams

Of elder time thou land of glorious flowers,
And summer-winds, and low-ton'd silvery streams,
Dim with the shadows of thy laurel-bowers!
Where, as they pass'd, bright hours

Left no faint sense of parting, such as clings
To earthly love, and joy in loveliest things!
"Fair wert thou, with the light

On thy blue hills and slepy waters cast
From purple skies ne'er deepening into night,
Yet soft, as if each moment were their last
Of glory, fading fast

Along the mountains!-but thy golden day
Was not as those that warn us of decay,

"And ever, through thy shades

A swell of deep Eolian sound went by
From fountain-voices in their secret glades,
And low reed-whispers, making sweet reply
To summer's breezy sigh!

And young leaves trembling to the wind's light breath,
Which ne'er had touch'd them with a hue of death!

"And the transparent sky

Rung as a dome, all thrilling to the strain

Of harps that, midst the woods, made harmony
Solemn and sweet; yet troubling not the brain
With dreams and yearnings vain,

And dim remembrances, that still draw birth
From the bewildering music of the earth.

"And who, with silent tread,

Mov'd o'er the plains of waving Asphodel?
Who, of the hosts, the night-o'erpeopling dead,
Amidst the shadowy amaranth-bowers might dwell,
And listen to the swell

Of those majestic hymn-notes, and inhale
The spirit wandering in th' immortal gale?

"They of the sword, whose praise,

With the bright wine at nations feasts went round.
They of the lyre, whose unforgotten lays

On the morn's wing had sent their mighty sound,
And in all regions found

Their echoes midst the mountains!—and become

In man's deep heart, as voices of his home!

They of the daring thought!

Daring and powerful, yet to dust allied;

Whose flight thro' stars, and seas, and depths had sought The soul's far birth-place-but without a guide!

Sages and seers, who died,

And left the world their high mysterious dreams,
Born midst the olive-woods, by Grecian streams.

"But they, of whose abode

Midst her green valleys earth retain❜d no trace,
Save a flower springing from their burial-rod,
A shade of sadness on some kindred face,

A void and silent place

In some sweet home;-thou hadst no wreaths for these, Thou sunny land! with all thy deathless trees!

"The peasant at his door

Might sink to die, when vintage feasts were spread,
And songs on every wind!-From thy bright shore

No lovelier vision floated round his head,

Thou wert for nobler dead!

He heard the bounding steps which round him fell,
And sigh'd to bid the festal sun farewell!

"The slave, whose very tears

Were a forbidden luxury, and whose breast
Shut up the woes and burning thoughts of years,
As in the ashes of an urn compress'd;

He might not be thy guest!

No gentle breathings from thy distant sky
Came o'er his path, and whisper'd 'Liberty!'
"Calm, on its leaf-strewn bier,
Unlike a gift of nature to decay,

Too rose-like still, too beautiful, too dear,
The child at rest before its mother lay;

E'en so to pass away

With its bright smile!-Elysium! what wert thou
To her, who wept o'er that young slumberer's brow?

“ Thou hadst no home, green land!

For the fair creature from her bosom gone,

With life's first flowers just opening in her hand,
And all the lovely thoughts and dreams unknown,
Which in its clear eye shone

Like the spring's wakening!-But that light was past-
-Where went the dew-drop, swept before the blast?

"Not were thy soft winds play'd,

Not were thy waters lay in glassy sleep!

Fade with thy bowers, thou land of visions, fade!
From thee no voice come o'er the gloomy deep,
And bade man cease to weep!

Fade with the amaranth-plain, the myrtle-grove,
Which could not yield one hope to sorrowing love!

"For the most lov'd are they,

Of whom Fame speaks not with her clarion-voice,
In regal halls!-the shades o'erhang their way,
The vale, with its deep fountains, is their choice,
And gentle hearts rejoice

Around their steps!-till silently they die,
As a stream shrinks from summer's burning eye.
"And the world knows not then,

.

Not then, nor ever, what pure thoughts are fled!
Yet these are they, that on the souls of men
Come back, when night her folding, veil hath spread,
The long remembered dead!

But not with thee might aught save Glory dwell-
Fade, fade away, thou shore of Asphodel!"

We are so firmly convinced of the intrinsic power of Mrs. Hemans' genius, that we feel a more than common interest in the success of her writings. We have reason to believe this. lady a woman of that modesty and good sense, that she will not disdain to correct errors when temperately pointed out to her, or reject advice, although it comes to her from the suspected pen of a Reviewer. Mrs. Hemans knows very well that a man may reasonably find fault with a bad picture,. though he cannot hold a pencil himself, and that habit, study, and observation, may enable a person to judge accurately of a composition, even if nature have denied him the actual capacity of composing himself. There are circumstances relating to this lady, which dispose us to feel much respect for her character, and we can assure her, that what we are about to say, is intended in a spirit of kindness and well-wishing.

Mrs. Hemans has not studied the great masters of the English language. Hence her style is not characteristic, her grammar not accurate, and her diction splendid rather than rich. We mean not that Mrs. Hemans is a stranger to the works of Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton; but she has read them only as an amateur; she has not studied them as an artist. Her acquaintance with foreign literature, has done her indirectly much injury, though it is not irreparable; it has induced her to commence trading before she has amassed a substantial capital. It is a fatal, but a general mistake, to suppose that we acquire our native language, and understand it by the ordinary intercourse of society; a certain use of it indeed is acquired by the weakest capacity, and in the lowest stations of life; the degrees of command in language vary infinitely according to the infinite varieties of learning and genius; perhaps no one ever yet obtained that mastery over it which might be finally won by unremitting and exclusive study of the grand models and treasure-houses of its beauty and its riches. It is no less an error, and a more extended one, to think that to qualify and consummate a poet, the study of poetry alone is sufficient. It is not sufficient. Great and manifold as are the wealth and splendor of our poetry, yet are they far outweighed by the exhaustless riches of the prose writings of the English language. He who has not seen how this language is managed in the ever-during works of Hooker, Bacon, Milton, Taylor, and Barrow, has not seen the largest and most glorious half of its conquests and the trophies.

It is the profound and reverential study of the great authors of the Elizabethan, and immediately subsequent ages, that can alone impart an adequate knowledge of the powers of the

8