their masculine sternness to affability when Mrs. Hemans or Miss Landon, "the Sappho of the age," contributed their glowing numbers to the world. Miss Landon having breathed a poetic sigh in the "Amulet" for 1832, a reviewer in "Fraser's" magnanimously observed: "This gentle and fair young lady, so undeservedly neglected by critics, we mean to take under our special protection." Could it ever have lain within the power of any woman, even a poetess, to merit such condescension as this?
Of a society so organized, the Christmas annual was an appropriate and ornamental feature. It was costly,—a guinea or a guinea and a half being the usual subscription. It was richly bound in crimson silk or pea-green levant; Solomon in all his glory was less magnificent. It was as free from stimulus as eau sucrée. It was always genteel, and not infrequently aristocratic,—having been known to rise in happy years to the schoolboy verses of a royal duke. It was made, like Peter Pindar's razors, to sell, and it was bought to be given away; at which point its career of usefulness was closed. Its languishing steel engravings of
