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This issue contains the index to Volume 64.




BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.


No. CCCXCVIII. DECEMBER, 1848. VOL. LXIV.


CONTENTS.

  MRS HEMANS,                                          641

  ON THE MISERIES OF IRELAND, AND THEIR REMEDIES,      658

  THE CAXTONS. PART VIII.,                             672

  REPUBLICAN FIRST-FRUITS,                             687

  PROPHECIES FOR THE PRESENT,                          703

  SIGISMUND FATELLO,                                   714

  THE "GREEN HAND."--A "SHORT" YARN,                   743

  EASTLAKE'S LITERATURE OF THE FINE ARTS,              753

  INDEX,                                               767


                        EDINBURGH:

    WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
             AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
  _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
      SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

     PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.




MRS HEMANS.


Felicia Hemans and the poetesses of England! Such would probably be
the form in which the toast would run, if literary toasts were the
fashion, or such a mode of compliment the one exactly suited to the
case. Not that we would venture positively to assert that Mrs Hemans
stands at the head of our poetesses, the first absolutely in point of
genius,--though there is but one name, that of Joanna Baillie, which
occurs to us, at the moment, as disputing with hers that
pre-eminence,--but because she, in a more complete manner than any
other of our poetesses, represents the mind, the culture, the
feelings, and character, of the English gentlewoman. Her piety, her
resignation, her love of nature and of home,--that cheerfulness easily
moved by little incidents, that sadness into which reflection almost
always settled,--all speak of the cultivated woman bred under English
skies, and in English homes. Her attachment to the privacy of life,
her wise dislike and avoidance of the _éclat_ of literary renown, and
the dull, dry, fever-heat of fashionable circles, tend to complete her
qualifications as a fitting representative of her fair countrywomen.
The cultivation of her mind, in its weakness as well as elegance,
savoured, perhaps, too much of what we are compelled to call feminine.
Alive at all times to beauty in all its forms, to music, to tender and
imaginative thought, she seems to have been almost equally averse to
whatever bore the aspect of an analysis of feeling, or an approach to
a severe investigation of truth. Present her with the beautiful, but
spare her all scientific dissection of it. Let the flower live as her
companion; do not rend it to pieces to show its conformation. Let but
the faith be tender and _true to the heart_, and disturb her not with
rude inquiries whether it possess any other truth or not. That too
much melancholy (at least for her own happiness) which is traceable in
her poems, arose in part from events in her life, but in part, also,
from this too partial and limited cultivation of the mind. The
feelings were excited or refined, but the reasoning powers not enough
called forth: no task-work was therefore given to the active
intellect; and a mind that could not be at rest was left to brood over
sentiments, either the sad heritage of all mortality, or the peculiar
offspring of afflictions of her own. We are not imputing, in this
remark, any shadow of blame to her; we make the remark because we
think that, eminent as she was, she still suffered much from the
unwise and arbitrary distinction which is made in the education of the
two sexes.

The difference between the mental qualities of the sexes is owing, we
apprehend, far more to education than to nature. At all events, there
is no such natural difference as warrants the distinction we make in
the mental discipline we provide for them. There are certain
professional studies with which no one thinks