As her poems have been reprinted in America, we shall content ourselves by quoting some specimens of her success in sonnet writing.

TEARS.

"Thank God-bless God:-all ye who suffer not
More grief than ye can weep for. That is well-
That is light grieving!-lighter, none befel

Since Adam forfeited the primal lot.

Tears! what art tears? The babe weeps in its cot,
The mother singing: at her marriage bell
The bride weeps:-and before the oracle
Of high faned hills the poet hath forgot

That moisture on his cheeks. Commend the grace,
Mourners, who weep!-Albeit, as some have done,
Ye grope tear blinded, in a desert place,

And touch but tombs :-look up! these tears will now
Soon in long rivers, down the lifted face,

And leave the vision clear for stars and sun."

TO GEORGE SAND.

"True genius, but true woman! dost deny
Thy woman's nature, with a manly scorn,
And break away the gaud's and armlets worn
By weaker women in captivity.

Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry

Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn-
Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn,
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony,
Disproving thy man's name; and while before

The world thou burnest in a poet-fire,

We see thy woman-heart beat ever more

Through the large flame-beat purer, heart! and higher,
Till God unsex thee on the spirit shore,

To which alone unsexing, purely aspire."

Miss Barrett must pardon our calling attention to her singularly defective rhymes? We take a few specimens at random :

"A rose once grew within

A garden, April green,

In her loneness, in her loneness,
And the fairer for that oneness!"

"On a mission

To declare the coming vision!"

"Wheeling o'er me,

Coronals of motioned glory!"

"Singing gladly all the moontide,
Never waiting for the suntide!"

"And earth will call her flowers,
To hasten out of doors!"

"Guess him on the happy islands
Learning music from the silence."

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:

and so on!

"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-"

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 possible, 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.

66

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 producedand if this is plain and sad to us, how profoundly melancholly it inust 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