[3] "_Strange_," &c.--Yet I remember that, in "The Pursuits of Literature,"--a satirical poem once universally famous,--the lines about Mnemosyne and her daughters, the Pierides, are cited as exhibiting matchless sublimity. Perhaps, therefore, if carefully searched, this writer may contain other jewels not yet appreciated. [4] "_Very nearly forgotten_."--Not quite however. It must be hard upon eighty or eighty-five years since she first commenced authorship--a period which allows time for a great deal of forgetting; and yet, in the very week when I am revising this passage, I observe advertised a new edition, attractively illustrated, of the "Evenings at Home"--a joint work of Mrs. Barbauld's and her brother's, (the elder Dr. Aikin.) Mrs. Barbauld was exceedingly clever. Her mimicry of Dr. Johnson's style was the best of all that exist. Her blank verse "Washing Day," descriptive of the discomforts attending a mistimed visit to a rustic friend, under the affliction of a family washing, is picturesquely circumstantiated. And her prose hymns for children have left upon my childish recollection a deep impression of solemn beauty and simplicity. Coleridge, who scattered his sneering compliments very liberally up and down the world, used to call the elder Dr. Aikin (allusively to Pope's well-known line-- "No craving void left aching in the breast") _an aching void_; and the nephew, Dr. Arthur Aikin, by way of variety, _a void aching_; whilst Mrs. Barbault he designated as _that pleonasm of nakedness_; since, as if it were not enough to be _bare_, she was also _bald_. [5] "_Murderous_;" for it was his intention to leave Aladdin immurred in the subterraneous chambers. [6] The reader will not understand me as attributing to the Arabian originator of Aladdin all the sentiment of the case as I have endeavored to disentangle it. He spoke what he did not understand; for, as to sentiment of any kind, all Orientals are obtuse and impassive. There are other sublimities (some, at least) in the "Arabian Nights," which first become such--a gas that first kindles--when entering into combination with new elements in a Christian atmosphere. CHAPTER IV. THE FEMALE INFIDEL.