fine woman, lived the celebrated Miss Pierrepont, more generally known under the name and title of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, one of the idols of Pope's idolatry, and indisputably the cleverest woman of her age. The reign of Queen Anne, and the period circling about that epoch, of about thirty-eight years, from the commencement of the reign of King William III. to the end of the reign of George I., was, we are inclined to suspect, the transition period (to employ a fashionable phrase) in the estimation of female character. Before that day women had not attained their just position in the social state, and since that time they have met with a truer regard and a more intelligent homage than even in the days of knighthood and chivalry, when a lady meant rather a fanciful abstraction of virtue and beauty, made only for worship and extravagant adulation (insincere and therefore heartless, and consequently insulting), than "a perfect woman nobly planned," "a phantom of delight," a genial, loving, household companion and help-mate, in trial and adversity. Pope himself and most of his brother wits appear to have held the female mind and the female heart in rather a low estimation, but the characters of women were improving in many particulars. They lost many petty foibles as they shifted the various fashions in dress and manners. The benevolent ridicule of Addison was pointed not only at their patches and their hair-dresses, and rouging, but also at their absurd political partizanship, at their preference of "pretty fellows to men of sense, at their vacant minds, simpering manners, ill-regulated affections. Swift's pungent satires on fashionable conversation did much; Pope's characters of women effected a greater reform, as if to falsify the satire; but to Addison, and perhaps still more

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),