they abused her principles, followed the lead set them by their rivals, and spoke of the authoress as a woman of genius, whom it would be generous to praise and entertaining to cultivate. Hence both parties were as ready to receive her advances as she was willing to make them. Moreover, when she attained to the height of her popularity, at the date of the publication of ‘The Wild Irish Girl,’ public taste was wretched in the extreme. The Waverley Novels had not yet begun to purify the atmosphere which the Minerva Press had long darkened, and Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austin stood wellnigh alone among lady-novelists. Now, Miss Owenson, though neither an Edgeworth nor an Austin, was far superior to your ‘Anna Marias’ and ‘Girls of the Mountain.’ She had a good deal of intuitive perception into the realities of woman’s nature, though not, perhaps, into the best parts of it; and hence, in spite of frequent outrages to good manners, and sometimes to decency, she commanded attention. “I read ‘Ida,’” writes Lady Charleville, “before it was all issued from the press, a volume being sent me as soon as sewed; and I read it with the same conviction of the existence of excellent talent, great descriptive powers; and in this work I find particular ingenuity in the novel attempt to interest us for a woman who loved two. And for each of the lovers the episode was happily contrived on this plan, and executed with great taste and spirit. I could have wished the situations had been less critical in point of delicacy, as the English gentleman has incurred great blame on all sides for having suffered her to escape; and the poor Turk too. The politics of Athens are ingenious; but, alas! one poor Emmet, hanging so recently in our streets, does not suffer us to enjoy our miseries in any fiction for some years to come. I have not read the ‘Monthly Review,’ where it is criticised. I choose to be pleased with what you write now, though I do heartily reprobate your putting off the period of polishing and purifying your language, for pique to those censors, who, after all, may be the best of friends, if they point out a path so attainable to fame. Assuredly, to those to whom God has given fancy, and a touch of the ethereal spark, it is doubly a duty to write pure language, under the penalty of else rendering the best gift of Heaven valueless. Where little is to be done, it is inexcusable to neglect that; and assuredly you promised me that ‘Ida’ should be more correct than your former publications, even, as you imagined, at the expense of fancy. Now, we found as much imagination as ever, and not more of the square and compass than hitherto.”