We take leave from this date of Miss Owenson the governess, that we may follow the fortunes of Miss Owenson the authoress. Her pen is never idle. She writes, with equal facility and speed, songs, which are set to music or arranged by her father, odes, and novels. She has learned, likewise, how to attend to her own interests in disposing of her copyrights. The Dublin publisher seems to have rendered her no account, so she opens a correspondence with Sir Richard Phillips of London. The story which she tells, and her manner of telling it, take with the bibliopole, and she packs up the ‘Novice,’ and sets off alone, personally to negotiate with him. With all her foibles (for, indeed, Lady Morgan’s worst faults scarcely deserve to be described by a harsher title), there was something about her which made friends wherever she went. Mr Quintin Dick, for example, a chance fellow-passenger in the coach from Holyhead, never lost his interest in her to the day of his death. Phillips could not resist her insinuating manners. He bought her MS. (she does not say what he gave for it); and, though married and of middle age, made love to her in his own way. Gruff, stern, old Mrs Inchbald, alone of the Londoners to whom she recommended herself, repulsed her. But the repulse made no lasting impression. She returned to Ireland gratified and hopeful, and extended day by day her reputation, and the circle, already not limited, of her correspondence and acquaintances. Lady Morgan’s novels have long since passed into the oblivion which is their rightful portion. They are all cast in the same mould. Whether we look into ‘St Clair,’ ‘The Novice,’ ‘The Wild Irish Girl,’ ‘The O’Briens and the O’Flahartys,’ or any other of the multitudinous brood which made their appearance at intervals from 1801 to 1826, each resembles the other as closely as pea resembles pea. We have in all of them the same characters, almost the same incidents, certainly the same opinions, and the same style of conversation throughout. Miss Owenson herself is the universal heroine; Mr Owenson figures in most of them, sometimes as a prince, otherwise as a nobleman. The officers with whom she associated in Kilkenny—the friends who sheltered her in her hour of need—her lovers, real or imaginary—her lord and lady acquaintances—an interesting priest, and a griping parson,—all come upon the stage. The love-passages are warm, the learning is ludicrous; the delineation of national manners and national modes of thinking one-sided; and the style lively and incorrect, or else turgid and pompous. They attained to a degree of popularity for which it seems difficult in this age to account. The truth, however, is, that Miss Owenson caught the top of the wave. By writing up Liberalism just as it began to struggle into fashion, she became to the Whigs, as a novelist, pretty much what Moore was as a poet; and she reaped her reward. For the Tories, as is their wont, while