“Simply as a specimen of harmonious versification, _I would place this paraphrase by Dr Watts above everything in the English language_, not even excepting Pope’s Messiah”!!! Whereas, to any one possessing a common ear, the lines must rank as absolute doggrel, and the ideas which they convey are commonplace and wretchedly expressed. Elsewhere she says:—“I certainly do not worship the old English poets. With the exception of Milton and Shakespeare, there is more poetry in the works of the writers of the last fifty years than in all the rest together.” We wonder if she ever read a line of Chaucer or of Spenser, not to speak of Pope and Dryden. But she objects even to Milton. Here is a piece of criticism which we defy the world to match: “There is a coldness _about all the luscious exuberance of Milton_, like the wind that blows from the glaciers across these flowery valleys. How serene his angels in their adamantine virtue! yet what sinning, suffering soul could find sympathy in them? The utter want of sympathy for the fallen angels, in the whole celestial circle, _is shocking_. Satan is the only one who weeps “‘For millions of spirits for his faults amerced, And from eternal splendours flung—’ “God does not care, nor his angels.” Our readers, we hope, will understand why we leave this passage without comment. But it may be worth while to show them the sort of poetry (beyond Watts) which Mrs Stowe does admire, and she favours us with the following as a “beautiful aspiration” from an American poet of the name of Lowell:— “Surely the wiser time shall come When this fine overplus of might, No longer sullen, slow or dumb, Shall leap to music and to light. In that new childhood of the world, Life of itself shall dance and play, _Fresh blood through Time’s shrunk veins be hurled_, And labour meet delight half way.”