Drive from each feature every cheerful grace,
And glare ferocious in the sallow face;
The wounded nerves in furious conflict tear,
Then sink in blank dejection and despair.
All this combustle, to use Gray's favourite word, about a brandy peach! But women have ever loved to hear their little errors magnified. In the matter of poets, preachers and confessors, they are sure to choose the denunciatory.
Dr. Darwin, as became a scientist and a sceptic, addressed his ponderous "Botanic Garden" to male readers. It is true that he offers much good advice to women, urging upon them especially those duties and devotions from which he, as a man, was exempt. It is true also that when he first contemplated writing his epic, he asked Miss Seward—so, at least, she said—to be his collaborator; an honour which she modestly declined, as not "strictly proper for a female pen." But the peculiar solidity, the encyclopædic qualities of this masterpiece, fitted it for such grave students as Mr. Edgeworth, who loved to be amply instructed. It is a poem replete with information, and information of that discon-
