The above is characteristic of a style in which Mrs. Norton excels, and it is a popular error to regard her solely as the poetess of impassioned personalities, great as she undoubtedly has shown herself in such delineations. The next extract is from Miss Barrett's "Seraphim," where Ador, a seraph, exhorts Zerah not to linger nor look through the closed gate of heaven, after the Voice had said "Go!" "Thou-wherefore dost thou wait? A copy of the earth-love shade- God filleth heaven with God's own solitude His Godhead being no more subdued Which seraphs can sustain, And that the one to which we press How the deep ecstatic pain Thy being's strength would capture! The life-fount whence his hand did gather Our immortalities! Straightway how thine own would wither, And shrink into a point like death, By gazing on its source!" We cannot do better, we think, than attempt to display the different characteristics of the genius of the two highlygifted women who form the subject of the present paper, by placing them in such harmonious juxtaposition as may be most advantageous to both, and convey the clearest synthetical impression to the reader. The prominent characteristics of these two poetesses may be designated as the struggles of woman towards happiness, and the struggles of a soul towards heaven. The one is oppressed with a sense of injustice, and feels the need of human love; the other is troubled with a sense of mortality, and aspires to identify herself with ethereal existences. The one has a certain tinge of morbid despondency taking the tone of complaint and the amplification of private griefs; the other too often displays an energetic morbidity on the subject of death, together with a certain predilection for terrors." The imagination of Mrs. Norton is chiefly occupied with domestic feelings and images, and breathes melodious plaints or indignations over the desecrations of her sex's loveliness; that of Miss Barrett often wanders amidst the supernatural darkness of Calvary, sometimes with anguish and tears of blood, sometimes like one who echoes the songs of triumphal quires. Both possess not only great mental energies, but that description of strength which springs. from a fine nature, and manifests itself in productions which evidently originated in genuine impulses of feeling. The subjects they both choose appear spontaneous, and not resulting from study or imitation, though cast into careful moulds of art. Both are excellent artists: the one in dealing with subjects of domestic interest; the other in designs from sacred subjects, poems of religious tendency, or of the supernatural world. Mrs. Norton is beautifully clear and intelligible in her narrative and course of thought and feeling; Miss Barrett has great inventiveness, but not an equal power in construction. The one is all womanhood; the other all wings. The one writes from the dictates of a human heart in all the eloquence of beauty and individuality; the other like an inspired priestess-not without a most truthful heart, but a heart that is devoted to religion, and whose individuality is cast upward in the divine afflatus, and dissolved and carried off in the recipient breath of angelic ministrants. Some of Mrs. Norton's songs for music are very lovely, and other of her lyrics have the qualities of sweetness and pathos to a touching and thrilling degree. One of the domestic poems in the "Dream and other poems," is a striking composition. The personal references in the miscellaneous poems are deep and true, and written with unaffected tenderness. She has contributed many prose tales full of colour and expression to several of the Annuals; but these, together with her musical talents and editorial labours, are much too popularly known and admired to render any further reinarks that we could offer upon them at all requisite. BANIM AND THE IRISH NOVELISTS. "Great heart, and bright humours, my masters; with a wit that never fingers, an a sorrow that sits with her head under one wing." "Certes, sir, your painted eloquence, It doth transcend the wit of Dame Prudence OLD COMEDY, CHAUCER. "Could he dance on the head of him, and think with his heels, then were he a blessed spirit." OLD IRELAND. "Och, Shane Fadh-Shane Fadh, a cushla machree! you're going to break up the ring-going to lave us, avourneen, for ivver, and we to hear your light foot and sweet voice, morning, noon, and night, no more!" CARLETON. THE author of the "O'Hara Tales" stands pre-eminent among the delineators of Irish character, and quite distinct from the mere painters of Irish manners. He goes to the very heart and soul of the matter. He is neither the eulogist nor the vilifier, neither the patronizing apologist, nor the caricaturist of his countrymen, but their true dramatic historian. Fiction, such as his, is truer than any history, because it deals not only with facts and their causes, but with the springs of motive and action. It not only details circumstances, but probes into and discovers the living elements on which circumstances operate. His Irishmen are not strange, unaccountable creatures, but members of the great human family, with a temperament of their own, marking a peculiar race, and his Irishwomen are in especial drawn with the utmost truth and depth of feeling. He knows well the sources of those bitter waters which have converted the im pulsive, generous, simple-minded, humorous, and irascible race with whom he has to deal, into lawless ruffians, or unprincipled knaves. He loves to paint the national character in its genial state, ardent in love, constant in friendship, with a ready tear for the mourner, and a ready laugh for the reveller, overflowing with gratitude for kindness, with open hand and heart, and unsuspicious as a child; and reversing the picture, to show that same character goaded by oppression and contemptuous injustice, into a cruel mocking demon in human form, or into some reckless, libertine, idle, hopeless tattered rascal. The likeness cannot be disputed. The description carries internal evidence with it. Whoever has been in Ireland remembers illustrations of it, and begins to discover the how and the why of things which before puzzled him. Even those who have never been in Ireland, cannot have gone through their lives without observing the cheerfulness, humour, and gaiety of its natives, even under depressing circumstances, their natural politeness, the warmth of their gratitude, their ready helpfulness, all evidences of a character to be moulded into excellent good form by love and kindness. The reverse of the picture need not be dwelt on. It is the theme of all the world. Irish reprobates and Irish criminals are plentiful. Banim and some few others can teach why they are so. In the small compass of nine pages of Banim's admirable story called "Crohoore of the Bill-Hook," there is contained what may be called the natural history of "Whiteboyism," and in those pages is comprised the philosophy of the whole matter, with its illustrations in human tears and drops of blood. In the vivid and exciting description of the White-boy outrage on the tithe-proctor, where the remorseless cruelty is rendered more revolting by its accompaniment of the never-absent Irish humour that makes the torturer comfort his wretched victim before he cuts off his ears, with "Don't be the laste unasy in yoursef, a-gra; you may be right sartin I'll do the thing nate and handy"-how finely does the author claim and obtain impartial justice for the perpetrators, at the tribunal of eternal truth, by the few words with which he prefaces his dreadful narrative: "The legal retribution," says he, "visited on Damien and Ravaillac has found its careful registers: nor in this transcript of real scenes, shall the illegal violence done to an Irish tithe-proc |