and where there are young ladies, novels are, like lovers, very welcome. We have read through every book in my possession, and now, like beggars, are going about to our neighbours. Can you be charitable? Any of the recent novels would be most thankfully received. I am writing in great haste, for a messenger in our house is like a carrier-pigeon, a rarity, and I must take advantage of the servant's going out."
In the same year, 1831, appeared the first volume of "Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap-book," a handsome quarto, containing upwards of thirty poems illustrative of an equal number of engravings. "It is not an easy thing," L. E. L. remarks, "in the introduction to this first essay, to write illustrations to prints selected rather for their pictorial excellence than their poetic capabilities, and mere description is certainly not the most popular species of composition." The difficulty was gracefully overcome, and immediate popularity was the reward. The Scrap-book became an annual; each year it may be justly said, producing a better series of poems than the preceding. The eighth and last volume by L. E. L. was completed previous to her departure from England in 1838. She had long become accustomed to the task of writing to the subject set before her, whatever it might be, and here the topics presented for poetical illustration were certainly miscellaneous enough. On all of them, or nearly all, she found something pointed, something touching or eloquent to say; investing common-place with beauty—
"Clothing the palpable and the familiar
With golden exhalations;"
while in the higher class of subjects, she found
