credence was given to the more outré forms of modern superstition, Miss Mitford retreated from the field. In the following February one learns that Miss Barrett is much better in health, and that she can even walk from the bed to the sofa, quite a grand deed for her. The report for the next month shows maintained improvement, and her friends are now quite hopeful for her. Her reading continues to be as varied and large as ever, and her letters to be filled with her clever comments upon what she reads. Her chief correspondent was Miss Mitford, who encouraged her to her utmost by praises of her great and growing powers. She writes My love and ambition for you often seems to be more like that of a mother for a son, or a father for a daughter (the two fondest of natural emotions), than the common bond of even a close friendship between two women of different ages and similar pursuits. I sit and think of you, and of the poems that you will write, and of that strange, brief rainbow crown called Fame, until the vision is before me as vividly as ever a mother's heart hailed the eloquence of a patriotic son. Do you understand this? And do you pardon it? You must, my precious, for there is no chance that I should unbuild that house of clouds; and the position that I long to see you fill is higher, firmer, prouder than ever has been filled by a woman. Great as was Miss Barrett's improvement, and well as she had borne the winter, we find that even by April she is unable to do more than move into the next room at the most, and that she is still unable to receive any new visitors. Her interchange of letters with Miss Mitford, however, becomes more incessant than ever, and from them one is enabled to learn what books the two ladies are reading, what their opinions upon them and upon the leading literary topics of the day are, and what each is doing as regards literature. As for Miss Barrett, little save literature seemed to her worth living for. Books, books, books, were almost the sole object of her life, and to read or write them her only occupation. Almost the only unliterary subject introduced is "Flush," a favourite spaniel presented to the poetess by Miss Mitford. The year 1842 passed away quietly for Elizabeth Barrett. Her health's improvement-slow, very slow, if sure-was the chief and most important event for her. If she wrote much, she published little or nothing beyond a few poems, and "The Greek Christian Poets," already spoken of. But during this time she was steadily preparing a new collection of poetry, of priceless value, for the press. Writing to Horne at the end of December, she says, in her jesting way, "The world is better than I imagined, and since I wrote to you about booksellers, I have had an inkling of a reason for believing what I had not faith for previously, that in the case of my resolving to deliver up a volume of poems to my own former publisher, he would print it without being paid for it." The first few months of 1843, like the last few of its predecessor, are almost a blank as far as any records of Miss Barrett's career are available. In April, Miss Mitford she has a letter from her, says 66 more cheerful and healthy than any I have received for a very long time." And on the 14th of June, the poetess sends a more than usually humorous letter to Horne, in reference to the distribution of his grand epic of Orion, published originally at the price of One Farthing. This nominal price, Horne says, was fixed in order to save the author the trouble and expense of sending copies to his numerous friends. Miss Barrett's first letter on the subject, which reads as if she were pretending to be piqued with the poet, shows that, after all, he did not escape either gratuitous distribution or literary correspondence in consequence. Certainly, if all his correspondents had possessed the epistolary talent of this one, he would have had nothing to regret at the failure of his plan. She writes : I have read and forwarded your letter to Miss Mitford, who tells me in a letter yesterday (a cross stitch) that, in spite of all I can say, she is glad of having written to you, because you "will be obliged to say something in your answer." Well! I also am glad that somebody is curious besides myself; and I am not sorry that the somebody should be herself, being jealous of her, " with Styx nine times round me," in natural proportion to her degree of glory and victory and twenty-five promised copies ! Very well, Mr. Horne! "It is quite useless," said I to Miss Mitford, "that you should make your application! Have I not asked for six copies, and been refused? Now carry the result of the application historically downwards—and me with it! As to your suggestion about the compromise of her and my struggling heroically for these spolia opima-really you can know little of what heroes, female heroes, are made, to suggest such a thing! I have told Miss Mitford (to disabuse you at once) that not if she and you asked me on your four knees to touch a page of the twenty-five would I consent to such a thing. I make feminine oaths against it. I DON'T CHOOSE TO Not in the least do I approve of your distributing the second edition in the manner of the first. The cause of it, and the object in it, are inscrutable to me, particularly as I don't hold to the common opinion that much poetry has made the author mad. Papa says, "Perhaps he is going to shoot the Queen, and is preparing evidence of monomania ”—an ingenious conjecture, but not altogether satisfactory. DO IT. The letter from which these extracts are taken had not been written long before the writer began to fear that their humorous banter might be taken too seriously, so she indited another epistle about Orion, saying, "I am more sorry . . at having written a very silly note to you. That it was simply silly-meaning that it wasn't seriously silly-I beg you to believe. I am apt to write, the thought or the jest as it may be, which is uppermost-and sometimes, too, when it is not uppermost. I struggle against a sadness which is strong, by putting a levity in the place of it. Now you will wonder what I have been writing if you have not received the note yet, and so I will explain to you that it was only some foolishness about the twentyfive copies-about Miss Mitford's victory and my defeat. K. T. λ." The tone of this and other letters written by Elizabeth Barrett is explained by what she writes in a following communication to Horne. Referring to her great shyness in meeting strangers, she says, " But that you won't believe, because, as Mr. Kenyon says, I grow insolent when I have a pen in my hand, and you know me only by that sign. I sometimes doubt to myself (do you know, besides) whether if I should ever be face to face with you, the shame and the shyness would not annihilate the pleasure of it to me!” That this shyness was real, no student of Elizabeth Barrett's life and letters can doubt, and that that it was which ofttimes forced her into writing somewhat overstrained and bold epistles-so different to her retiring nature-just as very bashful people often blurt out more forcible and more courageous things than really brave but more self-possessed persons would dare to. As the year advanced, and there were no signs of the invalid's falling back into her former sad condition, Miss Mitford, assisted by Mr. Kenyon, endeavoured to impress upon Mr. Barrett the advantages likely to accrue to his daughter by her being got out of town; but either he or the invalid herself feared the risk, and nothing was done. Her collection of poems, which it was arranged Moxon should publish, was rapidly approaching completion. It was to be in two volumes, and not to contain anything included in the previous, the 1838, collection. One important piece to be in this new work had appeared in Blackwood for August, under the title of "The Cry of the Children." It had been suggested by the Report of Horne on “The Employment of Children in Mines and Manufactories." He had been appointed by the Government an Assistant Commissioner to the Commission appointed to inquire into the subject, and his evidence, says Miss Barrett, excited her to write the poem named “The Cry of the Children." This poem, which Edgar Poe well characterised as "full of a nervous unflinching energy-a horror sublime in its simplicity-of which Dante himself might have been proud "-created quite a sensation on its appearance, and has been deemed, with much show of probability, to have hastened and helped the passing of the initial Act of Parliament restricting the employment of children of tender years. The poem is grand in its pathos and passion, in the simplicity of its suffering children, and the hardly restrained and lofty anger at their treatment. Some stanzas should be cited, if only to show what a lofty position their author had now achieved in the realms of poetry :— Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers'— The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows; They are weeping in the playtime of the others, |