to the gallant Steele, were the ladies mainly indebted. No writers equalled this last pair in administering judicious counsel in a cheerful, gay, graceful manner, by which they charmed those who charmed all the world besides. Public opinion and a better system of education tended greatly to setting the just rights of woman in a proper point of view. The goddess, from a toy and a plaything, the alluring charmer of an idle hour, became a pleasing, modest, domestic, happy woman, enlightened, ennobled, and refined. Such (to take the most favorable instances) we now find her. From a general digression on the state of female society in the reign of Queen Anne to the brilliant representative of the intellectual woman of that society, the transition is natural. Lady Montague is not, perhaps, after all, the very best specimen, for she was more the woman of clear, acute intellect, and of fashion, than the quiet wife of pure sentiment and propriety of behavior. She was rather the Aspasia (without her vices, though with her attractions) than the Cornelia of English women-the fine lady, rather than the polished gentlewoman-the ambitious wit, rather than the natural talker. But taking her as she was, she must have been as fascinating in her conversation as agreeable in her letters, and altogether a delightful creature, one disgusting foible, or rather positive defect excepted, which the fastidious reader may comprehend by a reference to the Walpoliana. Lady Montague was almost the first, in point of date, among English female writers, although not recognized as such in her life-time, none of her compositions having been published until after her decease. Lady Russell, Mrs. Hutchinson, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and a few obscure writers, had preceded her, but none in her own department had ap

proached her. She is the English Sevigné, unequalled in a gay, sprightly vein, and in easy natural narrative and description. The bulk of her correspondence, letters from Turkey, presents entertaining views of that country, as a book of travels. She had the most favorable opportunities of obtaining information (her husband being the English ambassador at the Sublime Porte), and made diligent use of them. From that country also she derived the practice of inoculating children for the small-pox, by which humane intervention she has entitled herself to the praise of patriotic humanity. With all her wit, and she had a large share; in the very face of her beauty, which was extreme; excluding her authorship; applauding her charitable exertions; we are repelled by a strong tinge of the masculine in her character. A vigorous mind left its imprint upon her disposition and manners. The strong understanding admitted coarseness of allusion and freedom of style. Her descriptions are luxuriant to voluptuousness; the atmosphere of the harem is painted couleur de rose. Vividness

of fancy is perhaps inconsistent with delicacy of taste, and strong conceptions with unimpassioned coldness of painting. The woman loses what the wit gains, and we feel that we had rather admire the beauty and applaud the wit, than take the woman to our heart for the journey of life. A brilliant evening in a splendid crowd can never make amends for mornings of lassitude and ennui, and years of dull, cheerless, uncompanionable repinings and moodiness. Age steals the roses from the cheek of beauty, and bereaves the woman of the world of all her charms. Wit is clouded and grows blunt in the passage of years, while the heart of the worldling is approaching more and more closely to a state of moral ossification, by which the soul in time be

comes wholly hardened, and the human creature is converted into a petrifaction. We are far from applying the whole of this homily to Lady Mary; but, we believe, we repeat a standard criticism in objecting to a portion of her writings, and to some of her habits and constitutional fea

VIII.

GRAY AND COWPER.

THE two best male writers of letters, between Pope and Lamb, were both poets like them, which was almost the sole point of resemblance the four possessed in common. They all had wit, and something of humor, but each dif fered from his brother bard. Pope's wit was courtly and refined; Gray's, like his taste, fastidious; Cowper's measured and moral, like himself in public, timid and restrained; and Lamb's full of the whimsical crotchets which formed a portion of his individuality and temper.

Johnson has underrated Gray's Pindaric Poems as unjustly as Hazlitt has overrated his letters. There are noble and grand thoughts filled out, and expressed in language ardent and picturesque, in the poems of Gray, and there is a majestic sweep in the pinions of his muse, which he has finely described in his own line of the eagle, “Sailing wide in supreme dominion, through the azure depths of air." He is often cold, but when he warms, he glows. His fire is the genuine afflatus, and no pasteboard imitation or balloon inflation. At times he comes nearer to Milton than any poet since the author of Paradise Lost. But in his letters, elegantly as they are written (the English is wonderfully simple for a stickler for the classics),

he appears by no means in his fairest guise. His criticisms in many cases are inadequate and criminally careless. He speaks slightingly of Thomson's charming poems, just then out. He relishes Gresset, however, and speaks with respect of Southern. Shaftesbury he anatomises keenly, but with justice. The Greeks and Romans always fare well at his hands, but his contemporaries he has little sympathy for. His humor (his nearest friends thought there lay his forte) would be more readily appreciated if it were less elaborate-a fine humorist and good fellow was spoiled in the pedantic student. For, it must be confessed, Gray was scholastic to pedantry with his characteristic nicety and daintiness. We tire of few things so soon as fastidiousness, for it is impossible to love those whom we cannot satisfy or please. Yet we sympathize with the independence of the man who refused to retain a friendship for Walpole after he discovered his hollowness and fickle nature; and we cannot but reverence the moroseness and admire the secluded life of one who despised the purse-pride of the wealthy, and from the lofty elevation of his genius looked down upon the arrogance of the great and noble. Bating his fastidiousness and reserve, Gray was every inch a poet, and greater than a king," a true Saxon man. His spirit had all the vigor, something of the roughness, and an appearance (only an appearance) of the sterility of the hardy plants of the cold North; but like them it bore equally well the heats of July and the snows of December, and in itself containing a source of perennial fruitfulness, outbraved the mocks of jealousy and lived down the scorn of calumny. It still continues in all its original freshness.

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The style of Cowper's letters is less elaborately elegant,