intimate friends for something more lively, and was writing a noble strain to commend the humanities of domestic and social life. Her poetry was receiving a better polish, while all the grace of fresh thought and tenderness of feeling was preserved. We were charmed with the demonstration of improvement, and admired the artlessness of her art, just as we were to hear the knell of her departure from earth. Her writings are but intimations of what she was capable of doing, could time for careful expression and critical revision have been granted to her.

It can but be interesting to the reader to have the estimation of Charlotte as a writer, from her dearest friend, Mrs. Mayo. We have a manuscript expressive of that friend's view of Charlotte's talents, designed for publication, and which was mislaid at the time. After speaking of Charlotte's death, the manuscript proceeds thus:

"She wrote, not from literary ambition, but from an over-full heart, as a bird sings, or a lamb sports; and scattered her melodies

'As an oak looseneth its golden leaves

In a kindly largess to the soil it grew on.'

Poetry was to her the green tree under which she rested after her daily toils. She gathered no fruit from its boughs; but, listening with a charmed ear to the murmuring strains amid its foliage, her spirit caught the melody, and warbled it aloud.

"Considering Charlotte's poetry, then, as a spontaneous thing, upon which she had bestowed no

culture, and from which she expected no fruits, it would be in bad taste to apply to it any other than the simplest æsthetic rules. Was it pure? was it simple? was it true? There can be but one answer. Sketched she a little cottage, how clearly it stood out upon the landscape, with its mossy roof and overhanging elms! Was an old country well her theme,-how temptingly trickled the clear drops over the brim of its mossy bucket! And those fair young cottage maidens! All after Goethe's pattern were they, with their clear blue eyes, pure loving hearts, and gay ringing laughter!

"Her taste was for the picturesque rather than the sentimental; and she excelled in depicting an object of form rather than in expressing an emotion of the soul. There is very little of the subjective in her productions; there was very little of it in her character. How charmingly would she glide along in narrative, and how glowingly describe an object or a scene! But draw her away. from the realm of sight to the realm of abstract thought, and her colors grew pale and ineffective.

"Wandering with her, however, in the paths of her own choosing, who will complain that she leads us to the little clear wood-streams, and to the dells where the violets grow? And who would have sweeter society than those cottage girls, who, in whatever situations they might be raised by prosperity, or precipitated by misfortune, were ever gentle, affectionate and true? In these scenes of rural beauty and romantic adventure, she found her natural vocation.

"Charlotte's stories are written with much colloquial ease, and evince a talent which, by cultivation, might have insured her an honorable place among the story-writers of the day. Her heroines are not all run in one mould. Lucy Murray, Margaret Leslie, Isadore De Vaux, are not three reflections of the same woman; they do not run together like rain-drops, but each preserves an individual character. Her narrative talent is superior to her delineations of character. Her plots are simple and natural. We can easily suppose her tales to have been real. Indeed, she often cheats us into the belief that they are so; and this is certainly a proof of no ordinary skill.

"Her poetry has the same characteristics ; —it is simple, tender, and full of delicate rural pictures. We count among the freshest and sweetest of her poems the dewy little stanzas on 'Violets.'

"In many of her poems Charlotte has displayed gushings of tenderness, which show what a deep vein of it there was in her nature. It is a tenderness touched with pity — a pathos that melts, but does not rend our hearts. Such is the character of 'Cassie,' and 'Clara,' two sonnets; and of 'The Motherless,' 'The Lonely One,' 'The Old Wife to her Husband,' and 'The Dying Wife to her Husband;'- this last, a beautiful poem, seems to have been prophetic of her own fate. But in none of her writings is this trait of tenderness displayed in so interesting a manner as in "The Magdalen.'

"It seems like a dream, that the gay, the young

the loving Charlotte, is no longer a communicant with us in the joys and sorrows of mortal life. Can it be that her ringing laugh is no longer heard beside her mother's hearthstone? Is it true that creatures so bright, and joyous, and good, die in their youth and beauty? Yet, but a few weeks since, we walked through the streets of the city, where we have so often gayly promenaded together, arm in arm; and though we gazed in every face we met, thinking of Charlotte, her beautiful eyes and smiling cheeks were nowhere to be seen. And then we entered her own home; we recognized, at every step, things that she had treasured and loved. Her books, her vase, her pictures, her perfumes, were they not all there? Yes, even a painted image of her own sweet face, with the mild blue eyes gazing into our own. But the genius loci was absent! She bounded not forward, as usual, to grasp our hand, and kiss our cheek. They told us she was lying in the burial-ground upon the Common.* For a week we daily passed and repassed that green enclosure. We saw the autumn foliage waving over her grave. There stood the silvery poplar, quivering like her own sensitive spirit; and the scarlet maple, rustling its beauty beneath the clear heaven from whence she doubtless looks down on her mourning friends. The air, the sun, the earth, were all so cheerful and pleasant, it seemed impossible to restrain the buoyancy of our spirits, even when treading near her dust. Charlotte was not there. She was liv

*Where she was first entombed. — B.

ing, and at our side. We felt that her spirit shared our joy; that it would have fled from us had we wept, or had we been unmindful of its presence. Our faith buries no friend."

Having spoken of the impression made by Charlotte's letters, and referred to her exterior life, and her talents as a writer, but one thing remains, and that is, to say a word of her religion. According to the predominance of a regard for spiritual above sensual things, is to us the evidence of religion in the soul. In Charlotte we see little love for the sensual much for the spiritual. The imagery employed in her writings shows whither her thoughts most impulsively and continuously turned. She knew the divine depth of sorrow. Her hours of sadness were never unilluminated by light from heaven, and she worshipped God in the cheerfulness of her soul. She chose for companions those who could feed her thoughtfulness, and direct its strength to good ends; and, with all the energy of feeling with which she disliked pretension and turned away from ostentatious piety, she loved the name and honor of God and his Christ. In her silent acts of charity to those poorer than herself, by the touching tenderness of her speech and actions towards the neglected and obscure, by the earnestness with which she pleaded for the sinful that they might not be abandoned, and by the warmth of her sympathies towards all efforts for making the words of Jesus "spirit and life” in the every-day dealing of man with man, the