Naught but the dim, faint line To speak of vanished hours-- Memory! what are joys of thine? Shadows of buried flowers! We should be disposed to dwell entirely on the shorter pieces of Mrs Hemans, but this would hardly be just. There is one of her more ambitious efforts which, at all events, seems to demand a word from us. _The Vespers of Palermo_ is not perhaps the most popular, even of her longer productions--it is certainly written in what is just now the most unpopular form--yet it appears to us one of the most vigorous efforts of her genius. It has this advantage too--it can be happily alluded to without the necessity of detailing the plot--always a wearisome thing, to both the critic, and the reader: every body knows the real tragedy of the Sicilian Vespers. The drama is unpopular as a form of composition, because the written play is still considered as a production, the chief object of which is missed if it is not acted; and the acting of plays is going into desuetude. When the acting of tragedies shall be entirely laid aside, (as it bids fair to be,)--that is, as an ordinary amusement of the more refined and cultivated classes of society--and the drama shall become merely a class of literature, like all others, for private perusal--then its popularity, as a form of composition, will probably revive. For there is one order of poetry--and that the more severe and manly--which seems almost to require this form. When an author, careless of description, or not called to it by his genius, is exclusively bent on portraying character and passion, and those deeper opinions and reflections which passion stirs from the recesses of the human mind, the drama seems the only form natural for him to employ.